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21

Ideologies and Upheavals

1815–1850

The momentous economic and political transformation of modern times that began in the late eighteenth century with the “unfinished” revolutions — the Industrial Revolution in England and the political revolution in France — would play out with unpredictable consequences in the first half of the nineteenth century. Attempts to halt the spread of the progressive forces associated with the French Revolution led first to a reassertion of conservative political control in continental Europe. Following the leadership of Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich, the aristocratic leaders of the Great Powers sought to stamp out the spread of liberal and democratic reforms.

The political and cultural innovations made possible by the unfinished revolutions, however, proved difficult to contain. In politics, powerful new ideologies — liberalism, nationalism, and socialism — emerged to oppose Metternich’s revitalized conservatism. In literature, art, and music, Romanticism — an intellectual and artistic movement that challenged the certainties of the Enlightenment and fed the growth of popular nationalism — captured the intensity of the era. A successful revolution in Greece, liberal reform in Great Britain, and popular unrest in France gave voice to ordinary people’s desire for political and social change. All these movements helped launch the great wave of revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848, and the dramatic results would have a lasting impact on the shape of Western civilization.

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