Europe in Turmoil - Study Notes

Lesson summary

Metternich, the Chancellor of Austria-Hungary, said that when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold. France sneezed in 1789, 1830 and 1848. The Industrial Revolution created a working class living in poor conditions, and from its struggles came trade unions, socialism, Chartism and the Paris Commune. Italy and Germany emerged as nation states.

Introduction: Europe after Napoleon

• Napoleon's fleets were crushed by the British in 1805; Spain rose against him in 1808; he invaded Russia in 1812 with 600,000 men.
• He abdicated in 1814 and was exiled to Elba; he returned in 1815, was defeated at Waterloo in Belgium by the British, Belgians and Prussians, and was exiled to St. Helena, where he died in 1821.
• Two causes of the wars of 1854-1871: restoration of monarchy with its privileges, and the boundaries drawn at the Congress of Vienna (1815) ignoring nationality.
• Metternich's Concert of Europe suppressed revolts in Naples (1820, Austrian troops) and Spain (1822, French troops).
• Workers worked fifteen to eighteen hours a day; trade unions, first declared illegal, were legalised in 1824.

12.1 Socialist ideas and communism

• The term Utopian Socialism was first used by Marx and Engels.
• Followers of Proudhon issued the Manifesto of the Sixty (1864).
• The International Working Men's Association (1864) declined by 1876. The Second International was founded in Paris in 1889.

Chartism in England

• An organised movement, not a riot or revolt; papers: The Poor Man's Guardian, The Charter, The Northern Star (1837, principal paper) and The Chartist Circular.
• The People's Charter, prepared by William Lovett of the London Working Men's Association, had six points: universal suffrage, voting by ballot, no property qualification, payment of members, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments.
• 1842 strike in Lancashire; 1848 Kennington meeting of 50,000 melted away. Its demands came later in the Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884.

July Revolution (1830) and February Revolution (1848)

• On 26 July 1830 Charles X issued four ordinances; Paris rose and Louis Philippe of Orleans replaced him. Belgium separated from the Netherlands; Greece became independent in 1832; the Polish revolt failed.
• February 1848: Louis Philippe fled; Lamartine and Louis Blanc led the opposition. The new Assembly shut Louis Blanc's workshops; the bloody June days (24-26 June) followed.
• Louis Napoleon was elected President in December 1848 and became Emperor Napoleon III in January 1852.
• Metternich fled Vienna in 1848, but counter-revolution won within a year.

Unification of Italy

• Metternich called Italy "a mere geographical expression". The Carbonari kept liberal ideas alive.
• Mazzini (1805-1872) started Young Italy in 1831. Cavour (1810-1861) started Il Risorgimento in 1847, joined the Crimean War and allied with Napoleon III (July 1858).
• 1859: victory at Solferino; peace at Villa Franca (11 July); Treaty of Zurich - Austria ceded Lombardy. 1860: Parma, Modena, Tuscany joined by plebiscite; Savoy and Nice went to France.
• Garibaldi (1807-1882), Hero of Two Worlds, formed the Red Shirts (1843) and conquered Sicily and Naples with 1000 volunteers.
• May 1861: Victor Emmanuel II proclaimed ruler of Italy; Venetia gained in 1866; Rome annexed in 1871.

Unification of Germany

• Herder (Volkgeist), Schlegel and Fichte (Addresses to the German Nation) promoted nationalism. Germany had about 360 principalities before Napoleon.
• Zollverein 1834; Frankfurt Assembly 1848 - Frederick William of Prussia refused the crown.
• Bismarck's blood and iron policy: war with Denmark (1864, Treaty of Vienna); Convention of Gastein (1865); Seven Weeks' War with Austria (1866, Sadowa, Treaty of Prague); North German Confederation of 22 states.
• Ems telegram led to the Franco-Prussian War; Sedan (2 September 1870); Treaty of Frankfurt (1871) - Alsace-Lorraine to Germany; William I declared Emperor at Versailles.
• France became the Third Republic in January 1875.

Paris Commune and the Long Depression

• Paris endured a five-month siege; workers took the city in 1871. The Commune banned night work in bakeries and gave pensions to widows and free education. Thiers crushed it; 20,000 to 30,000 were killed.
• The Long Depression (1873-1896) began with the Vienna Stock Market crash of May 1873; German shares fell by 60 percent.
• Strikes: Homestead, Carnegie Steel (1892); Pullman, American Railway Union (1894); Match Girls, Bryant and May; London dock strike (1889), mediated by Cardinal Manning.
• Germany's SDP rose from 3 percent of Reichstag seats in 1887 to 20 percent in 1903 despite Bismarck's anti-socialist laws.