NATIONALISM AND CONSOLIDATION
The Congress of Vienna was successful in that it prevented the nineteenth century from being dominated by the general, global conflicts that had characterized the latter seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It did not, however, eliminate the growth of nationalism, halt the spread of republican revolution, nor prevent the tipping of the balance of power though the consolidation of new nations in Europe.
Following the Settlement of Vienna in 1815, nationalism quickly became the dominant force in European political affairs. The territorial settlements of the Congress of Vienna had left millions of people either disunited or living under foreign rule. This was particularly true of the Germans, Italians, Belgians, Norwegians, Poles, and the numerous ethnic groups making up the Ottoman and Austrian Empires: Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs and Croats. To this list should be added Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians, and a host of others.
The Spanish Revolution
In 1808, Charles IV, the Bourbon king of Spain abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand VII. Napoleon refused to recognize the accession of Ferdinand, and installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, upon the throne. Though Ferdinand proved to be most unworthy of the effort, the Spanish people fought the French forces from 1808 until 1814 in an effort to secure the reinstatement of the Bourbon monarch. In 1810, the Spaniards who remained loyal to Ferdinand convened the Cortes, or Spanish Parliament, at Cadiz. After two years of debate, the liberal members of that body drew up a constitution in 1812 based upon the French constitution of 1791.
The fall of Napoleon resulted in the restoration of Ferdinand in 1814. Initially, the returning king was welcomed with joy. Joy soon turned to regret, however, when in spite of the efforts of the Spanish people on his behalf, Ferdinand promptly invalidated the constitution of 1812, disbanded the Cortez and had a number of its liberal leaders arrested. He then re-established the inquisition, restored the lands of the nobility and church, and proclaimed a return to divine right absolutism. At this point in history, Ferdinand might as well have proclaimed a revolution himself.
His mismanagement of Spain's finances and the revolt of two cavalry regiments under Colonel Rafael Riego led to a revolution in January, 1820. After a turbulant reign of eight years, Ferdinand was forced to accept the constitution of 1812 at the point of a gun barrel.
Metternich believed that the Spanish insurrection, viewed in isolation, was of minor significance. At the time of the revolt, Metternich believed that the rebellion would exhaust itself in a matter of weeks, provided there was no foreign interference. It was a decision which he came to regret. In a journal entry marked July 19, 1820, four days after learning of further revolutions in Naples and Sardinia, Metternich reflected upon the Spanish Revolution:
Here is the first movement: two squadrons of cavalry overturn a throne, and throw all the world into inexpressible troubles.
The insight of the great diplomat would prove prophetic, and the Austrian army, with the support of both Russia and Prussia, quickly crushed the rebellions in Naples and Sardinia
By June, 1820, the revolution had spread westward across the Iberian Peninsula, and the Portuguese Council of Regency was overthrown. King John VI of Portugal was in the colony of Brazil at the time, and upon his return to Lisbon he was forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the Spanish constitution of 1812.
Greeks win independence from the Turks in 1821.
Conflict in the Ottoman Empire began as early as 1804, with a nationalist movement among the Serbs. Though this struggle for nationhood began almost 200 years ago, it has realized its objective only in the past twenty years or so with the creation of the nation of Serbia. At the time, however, the 1804 revolt seemed almost inconsequential. It would not be so on the Greek peninsula.
The end of the eighteenth had resulted in a classical revival throughout Europe.
Decembrist Revolt in Russia, 1825
The confrontation with the French army during Napoleon's invasion of
Russia and the consequent occupation of France following the Settlement of Vienna allowed many Russian army officers to assimilate the ideas of the Enlightenment. By way of contrast they came to realize the economic and political backwardness of their own country and decided to introduce the modern age to Mother Russia. A number of disunited secret societies came into being among these officers. The catalyst for reform came about in late 1825 with the death of Alexander I. An unusual dynastic struggle took place in which the two brothers of the dead czar, Constantine and Nicolas, both recognized the claim of the other and declined the office themselves. For approximately three weeks, Russia was without a ruler.
Such a situation is an ideal breeding ground for revolution, and when news of just such a plot among the officers of the army leaked to the royal family, Nicolas quickly assumed the throne. On 26 December 1825, the army was required to take an oath of allegience to the new czar, and most regiments complied. The Moscow regiment, however, refused the oath, and marched into St. Petersburg in protest. Demanding the installation of Constantine, at that time commanding the Russian troops in Poland, and a constitution (when many of the soldiers heard the cry "Constantine and Constitution, they thought it was a reference to the Constantine and his wife), the Moscow regiment led a day-long insurrection. When all efforts to bring about a peaceful solution failed, Nicolas ordered the cavalry and the artillary to disperse the insurgents. Five officers were subsequently executed and over one hundred others were exiled to Siberia.
As a result of the Decembrist Revolt, Nicolas I became perhaps the most conservative ruler in all of Europe. Any hope of liberal reform in Russia was crushed, and the Czar was ever ready to send in Russian troops to crush liberal and nationalistic movements anywhere they might occur. In essence, Russia became the policeman of Europe, enforcing the conditions of the Vienna Settlement.
The 1830 Revolution in France
Following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Louis XVIII and the House of Bourbon again assumed control of France. He outlived his great adversary by three years, dying in 1824. Louis XVIII was succeeded by his brother, Charles X, who firmly believed that he was king by divine right.
Upon his assumption of the throne, Charles immediately asserted that those nobles who had lost their lands during the Revolution should be compensated from a designated government fund, which would be financed by lowering the interest rate on government bonds. In this case, most of the bond-holders belonged to the middle-class, and the lowering of the rates resulted in a substantial loss of income. Charles also restored the practice of primogeniture, meaning that the eldest son of a noble family inherited the family holdings. Additionally, he augmented the authority of the Roman Catholic Church by creating a law that punished sacriledge with imprisonment or death.
In light of these actions, the people of France responded by electing a liberal legislature (the French Legislature was now known as the "Chamber of Deputies") in 1827. Charles attempted to accomodate this new government by easing the enforcement of laws governing the press and education, but the liberals continued to press their advantage. According to the new legislature, the French people were entitled to a genuine constitutional government.
By 1829, Charles was convinced that his efforts at appeasement had failed. He dismissed his ministers, and in their place he appointed an ultra-royalist cabinet. The result was predictable. In the elections of 1830, the liberals won a landslide victory. Charles was now on the defensive.
A series of stunning French military victories in Algeria provided the king with a much needed diversion, and on 25 July 1830, amid the excitement of the establishment of a French Empire in North Africa, Charles issued a series of odious decrees known as the Four Ordinances. This decree restricted the freedom of the press, disbanded the legislature, and limited the franchise to the wealthiest people in the country.
As had happened four decades previous, the citizens of Paris led the way, took to the streets, and erected barricades. Charles X ordered in the troops, and over 1800 people died in the resulting conflict. With the lessons of history behind him, Charles abdicated on 2 August 1830 and fled to England.
At that point the liberals in the Chamber of Deputies appointed a new ministry composed entirely of constitutional monarchists. Louis Philippe, the duke of Orleans and head of the liberal branch of the royal family, was named as the new monarch. Under the Bourbon monarchy the tri-color flag of the Revolution was replaced with the white banner of the Bourbon family. Now the Revolutionary flag again flew over France.
Most of this, however, was token relief for the people of the country. The wealthy retained their social, political and economic status. Aside from the transfer of power to the House of Orleans, the only real change in France was a replacement of noble status by wealth as the road to influence.
THE SECOND REPUBLIC AND LOUIS NAPOLEON
The reign of Louis Phillipe continued in relative peace for eighteen years. Over the course of years, however, Louis Phillipe's liberalism became progressively more conservative. Political opposition developed, and early in 1848 those opponants organized a series of political banquets to provide a forum for criticism of the regime. On 21 February 1848, an edict was issued prohibiting such gatherings, and once again, the citizens of Paris took to the streets. Barricades were erected, and fighting broke out between the citizens and the municiple guards. As in the case of his predecessor, Louis Phillipe abdicated and fled to England.
A provisional government was put into place, hoping to address the massive unemployment that had produced the initial criticism of the regime, and numerous national workshops were organized to generate an income for the masses. The election of a National Assembly dominated by moderates and conservative on 23 April 1848, however, brought such socialist activities to a quick end. As a result, the fighting intensified, and new barricades appeared. On 24 June 1848, in a bid to restore order, troops were sent in by the Assembly with orders to destroy the barricades and bring an end to the rioting. In the end 3000 Parisian citizens were killed.
The violence of the "June Days" of 1848 served to establish the power of the propertied class. It brought an end to the Second Republic, and it led to the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the emperor, to the presidency. For three years the president haggled with the National Assembly, then, on 2 December 1851, he staged a coup and siezed absolute authority in France. In December 1852, Louis Napoleon was declared Emperor Napoleon III, in deference to Napoleon I's deceased son.
Belgians win independence from the Dutch in 1830.
SEPOY REBELLION IN INDIA
Following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British began the slow and arduous process of incorporating India into their ever-expanding empire. Initially, the process went smoothly enough, and the early employees of the British East India Company demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity to their India subjects. In general, the representatives of The East India Company treated the Indians as their equals. Rather than trying to Westernize the sub-continent, they attempted to "Indianize" themselves: they adopted native clothing and habits, smoking the hookay with their Indian companions and participating in the native sports of polo and elephant-fighting. English scholars learned the holy language of Sanskrit, and many of the great Hindu works of literature, philosophy, and religion were translated into English. Eventually these works made their way across the Atlantic and had a significant influence on the American Transcendentalist movement. A number of the employees took Indian mistresses, and some married Indian wives.
All of that began to change early in the nineteenth century. Competition for trade led to the end of the East India Company's monopoly and the Great Awakening in Europe had resulted in the creation of a new breed of missionary; zealous and aggressive. By 1840, these and other factors led the East India Company to prohibit those in its employ from attending Hindu religious events. This, in turn led to a separation of the British and native communities in India, and with that separation, prejudice and suspicion began to grow.
With the growth of their empire, the British came to believe that an obligation had been placed upon them to spread the benefits of Christianity and Western civilization to the rest of the world. Kipling referred to this obligation as "the white man's burden". When Lord William Bentinck became Governor General in 1828, he took this obligation quite seriously, and outlawed a number of traditional Indian practices. Suttee, the Hindu practice which required a widow to imolate herself on her husband's funeral pyre, the practice of killing female children by abandoning them to the elements, and the fierce Thuggee cult, which by strangling unfortunate wayfarers, offered sacrifices to the Hindu goddess, Kali, were all abolished.
Under this new policy the Westernization of India proceeded at a staggering rate. Public works projects were initiated and numerous schools were established, teaching English and European culture to the Indian population. The Hindu literature that, less than a century earlier, had held the undivided attention of so many scholars, came to be regarded with contempt, and the activity of the missionary organizations was substantially accelerated.
Inadvertantly, the British Raj was tying its own noose, as an entire generation of English-educated Indians became increasingly aware of the inconsistancies and deceptions of their British overlords.
Unknowingly, the British Raj was paving the way for its own downfall, as a generation of English-educated Indians grew up aware that the words and actions of British politicians were not always the same.
The process of alienation was accelerated under the administration of Lord Dalhousie, which began in 1848. In order to secure control of the sub-continent with greater efficiency, the British instituted a policy known as "lapse." Specifically, when an Indian monarch died without a legitimate heir, his holdings lapsed into the waiting hands of the British Governor General.
Dalhousie's successor, Lord Canning made matters worse by issuing legislation that enabled Hindu widows to remarry, and passing laws requiring members of the army to serve abroad, should the need arise. The problem with this latter law was that, at this time, for a Hindu to leave India would have resulted in the forfeiture of his status in Hindu society; his caste. Though he may serve the British faithfully in foreign wars, upon his return he would be regarded as an "untouchable," without social rank of any type, a pariah.
During this time period the ratio of sepoys, or native troops, in the British service increased to 6:1, as British soldiers were drawn off for service elsewhere. To make matters worse, Hindu holy men began to prophesy that British rule in India would end in 1857, the centennial anniversary of the Battle of Plassey.
The spark that would ignite this powderkeg came with the arrival of a new type of fire-arm -- the Enfield Rifle. The Enfield used a paper cartridge, the end of which had to be bitten off before the rifle could be loaded. After several weeks of training with these new rifles, the rumor began to circulate that the cartridges were greased with a combination of pork and beef fat. The sacredness of the cow to the Hindus and the ritual uncleanliness of the pig to the Muslims meant that both groups in the military service had participated in an act of ritual defilement.
The unclean ammunition was recalled, but it was to late to prevent a revolt among the sepoys. Supported by a broad spectrum of Indian society, from the lowliest peasent to Bahadur Shah II, the last of the Mogul dynasty, it looked as if the largest portion of the British Empire was on the verge of collapse.
Many of the Indian troops, however, remained loyal, particularly the Gurkas of Nepal and the Sikhs of the Punjab. The rebellion was finally brought under control some five months later, but not without significant changes taking place in the British administration of India.
Bahadur Shah II was exiled to Burma, where he died in 1862. Additionally, a proclamation was issued in 1858 by Queen, the Government of India Act, which did away with the East India Company and placed the nation directly under the authority of the crown. The governor general became a viceroy, personally representing the interests of the Queen. The end of the Crimean War had freed up a substantial number of British troops, and the ratio of British to sepoys in the military was increased from 1:6 to 1:1. Perhaps most important, the British began to seek recruits among those who had remained loyal through the crisis, the Gurkas and the Sikhs.
The British adopted a new tolerance for Indian traditions. This tolerance, however, was generated by pragmatism rather than sensitivity. The political position of the Maharajahs, or Indian princes, who had remained loyal during the crisis, was substantially augmented, and the policy of "lapse" was abolished. Restraint was urged in missionary activity. The efforts of the British to Westernize the sub-continent had effectively been brought to an end.
CONFEDERATE SECESSION, UNITED STATES
The question of centralized authority versus localized authority escalated in the United States throughout the 1850s, finally reaching a crisis in the early 1860s with the secession of the southern states from the Union.
ITALIAN UNIFICATION
At the time of the Congress of Vienna, there was no unified Italy. In Metternich's words, it was simply a "geographical expression," made up of a collection of small kingdoms and the Papal States. The northern portion of this "geographical expression was controlled by Austria, the central portion by the papacy and the kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, and the south by the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily.
Liberal leaders in Italy had long sought to unite all Italians under a single, constitutional monarchy. In the north, middle-class Italians had become antipapal in their politics, viewing the pope as a defender of the privileged classes. To their mind, the new Italy should be based upon the kingdom of Sardinia, since it was the only kingdom in Italy with a native Italian, secular monarch.
In 1848, tensions became violent, and the tiny kingdom of Sardinia declared war on Austria, and mobs threatened to take over the city of Rome. Though they had hoped that the Austrians would be too preoccupied with affairs abroad to defend their Italian possessions, the Sardinians could not have been more wrong. Austria won an easy victory, and the mob activity in the capital had so terrified Pope Pius IX (r. 1846-1875) that he became an entrenched anti-liberal.
In 1852, Camillo Cavour became the prime minister of the kingdom of Sardinia, which by this time was based in the industrial city of Turin, in the Piedmont. The kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia quickly became the center of political gravity in Italy. Cavour was a moderate, firmly committed to constitutional monarchy and opposed to any form of radical social change. He knew from the defeat of 1848 that the Austrian would never willingly give up their claims on Italian soil, so Cavour carefully crafted a defensive alliance with the French. With the backing of Napoleon III, Cavour then provoked Austria into a second conflict. The Austrians realized that they had been outwitted, and subsequently forfeited the large province of Lombardy to Cavour and the Piedmont.
With the defeat of Austria, most of northern Italy allied itself with the Piedmont. In 1860, the Kingdom of Italy came into existence. It was also in that year that a colorful and charismatic revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi, came on to the scene, and led a volunteer army known as "The Thousand Red Shirts" throughout the southern portion of Italy on a mission of conquest with the goal of unification. By the end of 1861, the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, made up of the southern portion of the Italian Peninsula and the Island of Sicily, had been assimilated by the Kingdom of Italy. Only the Papal States, surrounding the city of Rome, and the northern province of Venetia, still governed by Austria, remained. Venetia was gained when the Italians joined Prussia in a brief, but costly, war with Austria in 1866, and the Papal States were annexed in 1871, when the French garrison stationed there was withdrawn to fight in the Franco-Prussian war. Prudently, the revolutionaries left papal authority intact in Vatican City. Nevertheless, relations between Italy and the Roman Catholic Church would remain strained until the reign of Benito Mussolini, well into the twentieth century.
THE BIRTH OF GERMANY
Just as the modern state of Italy came into existence by the military and political extension of the kingdom of the Piedmont, the modern state of Germany came into existence through the political and military expansion of Prussia. The emergence of Germany as a unified state was, perhaps, the most important single development of the nineteenth century. By and large, that emergence was the realization of the vision of two men: Kaiser William I of Prussia, and his trusted chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.
Bismarck was the greatest European statesman of the latter half of the nineteenth century. He was a Junker aristocrat, therefore he leaned toward conservatism, but he was also an entrenched nationalist, and he longed for a unification of the German people under the banner of one nation, rather than the 16 kingdoms and city-states which was there lot under the Treaty of Vienna (1815).
The primary obstacle to this unity was the fact that there were two major German nations in Europe, in addition to the 16 smaller states, and the other major power, Austria, was quick to point out that Prussia did not speak for all of the Germans in Europe. Prussians, on the other hand, maintained that there were more non-Germans in Austria than Germans, so Austria could not properly be considered a "German" territory. Bismarck realized that the only way to achieve his objective was to remove Austria from German affairs as quickly and as throughly as possible. To accomplish this, Bismarck began to take actions which invariably made it appear that Austria was the "bad guy," always opposed to German unity.
In 1866, this policy finally led to confrontation. The Austro-Prussian War was decided in favor to the Prussians in one significant battle, won by the Prussians through their strategic use of the railroads and repeating rifles. In the peace settlement Bismarck asked for little. No money nor land would change hands. The only concession desired by the Prussians was for Austria to permanently withdraw from Germanic affairs.
Having removed the primary opposition to German unity, Bismarck now was faced with providing a motive for German unity. This he would accomplish by a cleverly manipulating a confrontation with France, the traditional enemy of all Germans, and making it appear as if France was the aggressor. Ties of blood and language would then force all Germans into uniting with Prussia against their common foe. Bismarck was correct in his assessment of the situation.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 was provoked by a ruse on the part of Bismarck. As a result of a complex diplomatic situation the possibility had been created of a cousin of William I, the Prussian King, becoming king of Spain. For France, this meant the presence of a second Hohenzollern state on her southern border, and such a condition was unacceptable. Bismarck saw the opportunity present in the predicament, and turned it to his advantage by editing a press release to make it appear as if William I had insulted the French ambassador. Napoleon III took the bait, and declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. Bismarck correctly surmised that the southern German state would quickly ally themselves with Prussia, and the Germans quickly defeated the French and captured Napoleon III on 1 September 1870. By the end of the month the Germans laid siege to Paris. Napoleon III abdicated and on 18 January 1871 the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Ten days later, Paris capitulated.
In the peace settlement, the French were required to pay a substantial indemnity to the Germans, as well as surrender the territory of Alsace-Lorraine. William I accepted the imperial title of Kaiser. After centuries of division, the German people had consolidated into a single political entity. In a matter of months a new nation had come into being. More important, this new nation was also the most populous and most powerful in all of Europe. This new nation had been organized by Prussian rulers, created by the Prussian army, and it would be ruled by Prussian institutions. Conducting all for the next nineteen years would be the powerful and ominous figure of the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck.
Further Developments in France
The nineteen year reign of Napoleon III can only be characterized as tumultuous. Throughout the 1850s, the emperor had attempted to maintain tight reins on the government. Gradually, however, he became less authoritarian and a number of rather liberal concessions were made. These concessions, however, were designed primarily to distract attention from his disastrous foreign policy. His decision to engage Germany in 1870 was simply the last of his numerous efforts to retain France's position of leadership abroad and his own popularity at home.
With the capture of the Emperor, a republic was declared, and a Government of National Defense was established at Paris. When siege was laid to the capital, the seat of the government was shifted to Bordeaux. Though the rest of France was ready to sue for peace with Germany, the Parisians fought on, finally surrendering in January 1871.
The surrender of Alcase-Lorraine and the large war indemnity imposed by the peace treaty was bitterly opposed by the citizens of Paris, and they responded on 26 March 1871 by electing a radical municipal government, which they called the Paris Commune. Still recuperating from the siege by Germany, the Parisians now had to defend themselves against fellow Frenchmen. By early April, the City of Paris was under siege by the troops of the National Assembly, and on the 21st of May, the troops broke through the Parisian defenses. Approximately 20,000 citizens were killed in the resulting violence.
The Parisian uprising was curtailed, but the problem of creating a government remained. A Third Republic was created, simply because there was no alternative. The Monarchist faction in the National Assembly did possess a majority, but they were divided in their loyalty between the House of Bourbon and the House of Orleans. A provisional president was elected, Marshal MacMahon, in the hopes the two factions could resolve their differences. Finally, in 1875, after four years of turmoil, the National Assembly adopted a law that provided for the election of a Chamber of Deputies by universal manhood suffrage, a Senate chose by the Deputies, and an executive vested in a President chosen by both houses. The long-sought French Republic came into being because no one could decide who should be king.
THE DREYFUSS AFFAIR AND THE RISE OF ZIONISM
Perhaps the most dramatic event in the history of the unstable Third Republic was the Dreyfuss Affair. Alfred Dreyfuss was a Jewish captain in the French army who was accused of selling military secrets to the Germans. The military court refused to entertain evidence that another officer was at fault in the affair, and Captain Dreyfuss was exiled to the penal colony on Devil's Island.
More liberal-minded Frenchmen, outraged at the whole affair, began to assert the innocence of Dreyfuss, and to accuse the military of everything from anti-Semitism to harboring a criminal. Under such pressure, the army retried the case in 1899, and again found Dreyfuss guilty, but with "extenuating circumstances." The Captain was pardoned, but his supporters continued to press for a full acquittal. This finally came in 1906, and Dreyfuss was awarded the Legion of Honor.
Though apparently resolved, the Dreyfuss Affair proved to be the catalyst for still another nationalist movement. Attending the trial of Dreyfuss was a Jewish reporter from Vienna, Theodor Herzl. With the lessons of European history behind him and rampant anti-Semitism before him, Herzl became convinced that the Jews would never be able to live peacefully in Europe. In a few intense months following the trial of Dreyfuss, Herzl drafted what was to be the equivalent of Paine's Common Sense for the Zionist movement. The title of the pamphlet was The Jewish State, a succinct, crisp, and radical analysis of the difficulties the Jews were experiencing as they attempted to assimilate into European society.
In closing the book, Herzl argues that such assimilation is impossible, and that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the ancestral home of the people. This proposal was the beginning of what came to be called the Zionist Movement. Within two years of the publication of The Jewish State, the World Zionist Organization had been established, and the first Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. By the time Dreyfuss was finally exhonerated in 1906, there were literally thousands of local Zionist organizations across the world, and a steady stream of immigrants trickling into Palestine.
Herzl was able to gain the backing of prominent Jewish leaders in Europe and the United States. Significantly, he was also able to gain the support and understanding of a number of world leaders, among whom, interestingly, were Kaiser William II and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. His powerful arguements convinced the British Government to offer up a portion of their holdings in East Africa to provide a territorial basis for the establishment of a Jewish State, though the First World War convinced the British that Palestine was the only place such a political entity could possibly come into being. The aspirations of the Zionists were finally realized following World War Two, with the establishment of the nation of Israel in 1948.
