Restoration and Revolution: An Age of Competing Ideologies Flashcards
What were strategies countries used to restore stability after Napoleon while limiting the chances for revolution?
The development of larger and more efficient bureaucracies and attacking the legacy of the Enlightenment.
How did countries develop larger and more efficient?
In the period after the Napoleonic Wars, states created larger and more efficient bureaucracies, secret police forces, and more efficient censorship offices.
How did countries attack the legacy of the Enlightenment?
Despite the attacks against the Church during the Enlightenment and French Revolution, the Protestant and Catholic Church witnessed remarkable recovery as states viewed religion as a tool to aid in repression. The Inquisition reemerged in Spain, the Russian clergy held the policies of the state, and the Anglican clergy blocked Catholic emancipation and the Great Reform Bill.
What were the major competing ideologies of the Restoration period (after 1815)?
Conservatism, liberalism, nationalism, and socialism.
What was conservatism and who founded it?
Conservatism is rooted in the writings of Edmund Burke whose Reflections on the Revolution in France was widely read. On the continent, Joseph de Maistre argued for a more extreme form of reactionary conservatism.
What were Burke’s major points?
He thought that the principle of the rights of man and natural law were fundamentally dangerous to the social order. He thought tradition underpinned the rights of those in positions of authority. He believed in slow political change over time, which was not reactionary.
What were Joseph de Maistre’s major points?
He said that the Church should stand as the foundation of society since all authority stemmed from God. He said that monarchs should be extremely stern with those who advocate even the slightest degree of political reform.
What was nationalism?
Nationalism is the idea that all peoples’ identities are defined by their connection with a nation and their loyalty is owed to this nation. Emerging after the French Revolution, national conscription helped create the idea of a citizen whose loyalty lies with the nation.
How did nationalism spread across Europe?
Nationalism became important in other parts of Europe in reaction to the expansion of France. In the German and Italian states, the desire to get rid of French soldiers created a unifying purpose that helped establish a national identity. Writers like the Grimm brothers revealed a traditional German national spirit.
What was nationalism often associated with?
Nationalism was often tied to liberalism because many nationalists, like liberals, wanted political equality and human freedom to serve as the bedrock for the new state.
What was liberalism?
Liberalism was a philosophy that, like in the writings of Enlightenment thinkers, placed emphasis on the individual’s natural rights and support for limits on political authorities through the writing of constitutions and the formation of parliamentary bodies. It was connected to the early stages of the French Revolution especially in Lafayette’s Declaration of the Rights of Man. They hoped to limit the power of the state and emphasized the individual’s right to enjoy religious freedom, freedom of the press, and equality under the law.
What was liberalism in relation to economic thought?
The most important liberal economist was Adam Smith and his The Wealth of Nations, who advocated that governments should let individual businesses set prices and production levels and that individual decisions would provide a balance between supply and demand, while providing incentives to business to find cheaper ways of production.
What were the revolutionary ideas of Smith’s theory?
Specialists have natural skills and can produce their specialties better and faster than others, so trading is productive; this was contrary to mercantilist ideas. He also said that government price-fixing was unnecessary and counter-productive.
Who were other famous liberal economists?
Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo
What were Malthus and Ricardo’s ideas?
Malthus argued that the population was growing so fast it would eventually outstrip food supply. Ricardo said that the only way businessmen could find advantages over their competitors was to offer lower wages, resulting in a steady downward spiral in opposing firms’ earnings.
