Politics and Culture of the Nation-State

1850–1870

The second half of the nineteenth century marked the dawning of a new age in European politics and culture. After the failed revolutions of 1848 to 1849, politicians, artists, intellectuals, and the general public cast aside the promises of idealists and claimed to see society as it really was: combative, competitive, and inherently disordered. To master this unruly scene and strengthen state power from above, European leaders embraced tough-minded politics (Realpolitik). With the rise of Realpolitik came the decline of the concert of Europe, which had favored a balance of power over national aspirations. The first document reflects Russia’s response to this changing landscape as the country struggled to modernize. The second and third documents allow us to see two masters of Realpolitik at work—Italian count Camillo di Cavour (1810–1861) and Prussian politician Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898). The writings of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Charles Darwin (1809–1882) illustrate the growing prominence of the natural sciences at the time, as the fourth and fifth documents illustrate. Spencer proposed the idea of evolution before Darwin and used it as a lens for understanding the development of both nature and society. Darwin’s research gave further scientific credence to this idea, suggesting that human beings had evolved from more primitive life forms. Together their work helped to lay the foundations of a school of thought known as Social Darwinism; its proponents maintained that only the toughest and most advanced societies would prosper, leaving the “unfit” to fend for themselves.