Liberty Leading the People Eugene Delacroix 1830
This unit examines a number of extremely important ideas: liberalism, nationalism, socialism, and romanticism. Studying these ideas helps us understand the historical process in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A key aspect of that process was the bitter and intense struggle between the conservative aristocrats, who wanted to maintain the status quo, and the middle and working class liberals and nationalists, who wanted to carry on the destruction of the old regime of Europe that had begun in France in 1789. The symbol of conservatism was Prince Metternich of Austria, Europe's leading diplomat. Metternich was convinced that liberalism and nationalism had to be repressed, or else Europe would bread up into warring states. In oppositions to Metternich, liberals and nationalists saw their creeds as the way to free humanity form the burden of supporting the aristocracy and form foreign oppression. Metternich's convictions were shared by the other peacemakers at Vienna in 1814, while those of the liberals fanned the fires of revolution, first in 1830 and, more spectacularly, in 1848. Political liberalism, combined with the principles of economic liberalism, with its stress on unrestricted economic self-interest as the avenue to human happiness, was extremely attractive to the middle class. Of the major powers, only Britain was transformed by reform and untouched by revolution
 |
 |
|
|
|
FOR ADDITIONAL RESOURCES CHECK THESE LINKS:
