[0:00]Hello, welcome back to our lecture series for Western Civilization 102. Our topic today will be conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism. And basically, we're discussing what happens in Europe after the revolution, the French Revolution. After 1815, um, because of the chaos, and because of the instability that had occurred during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. The rulers in Europe, as you've seen, wanted to restore stability and reestablish as much of the old ways. uh, in Europe when they met after the Napoleonic wars and after the French Revolution, of course. The people and institutions that wanted to reestablish this old order and and go back to the way things were became known as the conservatives. The conservative order or conservatism. Uh, we had already discussed the very powerful countries in Europe such as Britain, uh, Prussia, Russia, and Austria, deciding to, um, guarantee peace and continue to meet, um, periodically after, um, 1815. And of course, um, like I said before, they will establish, um, you know, we're not going to see a major war break out, of course, we have World War I, but that's in 1914. And that's a century later. Uh, of course we have a lot of revolutions as I've mentioned. We had very famous men participating in the post-Napoleonic, uh, Europe, such as Talleyrand, who was the French representative. And we had Metternich was a very famous Austrian, uh, diplomat, Clemens von Metternich. Uh, we had Viscount Castlereagh, who was a very prominent, um, British diplomat as well, British foreign secretary. We had Tsar Alexander, Tsar Alexander, um, the first. Very prominent figure here for Russia as well. And so all of these men and these countries will continue discussing about Europe. And and as you can imagine, you know, the monarchs were mostly conservatives. Well, they were conservatives because they want to restore, they want to go back to the way it was and restore the old days. In fact, the Bourbon Dynasty, remember the Bourbons, the Dynasty in France, the Bourbon Dynasty was restored to France after the Napoleonic Wars and Spain. The wars of the Spanish succession when Philip, um, is allowed a relative of, um, Louis XIV was allowed to take over the throne in Spain.
[3:20]So, not everyone felt that way, obviously.
[3:27]I mean, the French Revolution had had, um, put forth some very, um, basic freedoms and ideas that a lot of people in Europe wanted to see happen. Um, you know, we also of course, had had the American Revolution as well. And so some of these ideas, especially the constitutions, having it written down, um, became very, uh, appealing to a lot of people in Europe. The, uh, people that wanted these constitutions, for the most part, they were known as the the liberals, or of course, liberalism as we see here. And there will be a lot of liberal uprisings that will take place in, um, places like Italy and Spain. Uh, where people are wanting to see these written constitutions coming about. And of course, the monarchs are not, you know, not exactly enthused by that idea. And of course, we have nationalism. Nations. Um, this will become a huge problem, um, especially in the Austrian Empire, but elsewhere of course as well. Because you'll have a group of people who, um, want to to see their nation created based on ethnic ethnicity, uh, common history. And when you have an empire like the Austrian Empire, where you have so many different ethnic groups existing within the Empire. And if one ethnic group wants to see their nation created out of that, you know, out of their ethnic group, then that's going to create problems for others within the Empire. So, you know, people also are wanting to, um, see not only written constitutions, but representative governments, and we're coming out of that age of absolutism that you learn quite a lot about.
[5:57]And these absolute, uh, rule that had existed previous to the French Revolution.
[6:16]So all of this will create, um, some chaos in Europe in the 1820s and 1830s. And quite a lot of revolutions that take place in the year 1848 and 1849. Not major wars, of course, but revolutions. So let's learn more about, um, what's happening in Europe, uh, with these different, um, beliefs and movements, with conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism. The French Revolution and Napoleonic era spawned a number of ideologies that became increasingly important in the 19th century and that continued to influence life in the 20th and even in the 21st centuries. Among these are conservatism, liberalism, nationalism, and socialism. Before we turn to these, however, it's necessary for a moment to talk about a different sort of intellectual movement that occurred in the 19th century that underlay all of these ideological isms that I've just mentioned. And that is romanticism. Romanticism is often associated in the popular mind with romantic novels, with romantic music, romantic art, and all of that is a legitimate association. But romanticism is an intellectual movement was to some extent a repudiation of the enlightenment. The romantics, starting with Rousseau and continuing on into the 19th century, rejected the notion that reason was the only sure guide to wisdom, the only sure guide to truth. They put greater emphasis upon what they called sentiment or what we might call emotion today. They also resurrected the importance of faith in many cases as opposed to reason. The romantics also developed, uh, a very great interest in the past and in history. And that interest in history in turn led to a growing interest in nationalism. Nationalism, uh, drew part of its impetus not only from romanticism, but from the actual events of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. For one thing, the French had set an example with their success in the 1790s and the early 19th century as to what a people could do if they were truly united as a nation. And even those nations who regarded the French as an enemy recognized that their success came from their national unity at times when they were able to work together. And therefore, other nations after 1815 will imitate that. A second, sort of negative way in which, uh, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era fostered nationalism, is that after Napoleon had conquered much of Europe, it led to resistance to Napoleonic conquest and to French imperialism that helped to create nationalism in Germany, nationalism in Italy, and so on. So, nationalism was spawned in in a sense as a reaction to the French Revolution. However, it went on to become a full-blown ideology as we'll see, uh, in a few minutes. First though, let us turn to conservatism and liberalism, the two ideologies which were the two most direct products of the French Revolution. And I must caution you that the terms conservative and liberal or conservatism and liberalism, meant something very different in the 19th century from whatever they might mean now. Both terms have become rather amorphous, uh, but they meant something very precise in the 19th century and something very different from what we think of in terms of those, uh, labels today. A conservative in the period just after 1815 was someone who rejected the ideals of the French Revolution. Someone who wanted to go back to the way that Europe had been prior to 1789. Uh, the most prominent example of a conservative thinker who influenced thinking in the 19th century was the British thinker Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke had at one point been what you might think of as a 19th century liberal. He had been a supporter, for example, of the American Revolution. But when the French Revolution broke out, he reacted against it and eventually wound up strongly condemning the French Revolution. Furthermore, he rejected the entire ideology of John Locke, the notion that man is born with certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. The notion that government exists only to protect those rights and the notion that one has the right to revolution if a government fails to do that. Burke instead emphasized the organic nature of the state, the evolutionary nature of the state. The fact that the state has been built up by generation upon generation of history and he argued that no one generation has the right to overthrow that. This became the the underlying basis for conservatism in the 19th century. And what many conservatives sought to do was to restore the effectiveness of monarchy, to maintain the distinction among social classes in which you had a monarch, a privileged aristocracy, a less privileged, uh, middle class and a subordinate working class. This was part of the whole ideology. Conservatives, as a general rule, therefore, were resistant to any further change. Some wanted to roll back things to pre-1789. Uh, even the most forward-thinking conservatives wanted to keep things as they were and not change any further. That meant conservatives were, of course, the opponents of liberals. But it also meant that conservatives were the opponents of nationalist because, as we'll see shortly, nationalist also wanted to carry out major changes in society in the 19th century. Now, if we turn to liberals in the period just after 1815, those were individuals who embraced the ideals of the French Revolution. Not necessarily the violence and the upheaval that had characterized certain phases of the revolution, but they did believe in the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Furthermore, liberals were very strongly grounded in John Locke's ideas, uh, about inalienable rights and the right of revolution. Therefore, they were diametrically opposed to the beliefs of conservatives. In fact, classical liberals, which is the term that we use to describe, uh, liberals in the 19th century, are really the ideological ancestors of both modern conservatives and modern liberals, each group of which has taken some ideas from the classical liberals and gone on with them. Unless you are someone who wants, uh, to bring back monarchy and an aristocracy, you can't really be a conservative in the 19th century sense of the word, although it means something very different right now. Uh, among the, um, more prominent liberals in the early 19th century was a British thinker by the name of Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham invented, uh, an approach to liberalism that is sometimes called utilitarianism. Uh, it those of you familiar with the political thought of Thomas Jefferson will recognize some of Bentham's ideas as well. Bentham argued that government should only do those things that have utility. That is, only those things that that are necessary like defense are those things which directly benefit the people of a state in some way. Otherwise, he believed, government's power should be restricted. Again, the emphasis that liberals tend to embrace at this time is upon individual rights as opposed to the rights of the state. Whereas conservatives tend to be state-oriented and even monarchy-oriented, liberals at this juncture are more interested in individual rights. Therefore, for Bentham, the only time government should do anything is when government could do it better than an individual. Uh, another important liberal thinker who comes in the middle of the 19th century is the English thinker John Stewart Mill. Who, again, emphasized individual liberty, who emphasized the rights of all individuals, uh, all social classes, but also of both men and women, uh, placing him ahead of a great many thinkers in that regard. Now, among conservatives then for much of the 19th century, the emphasis is on stasis, upon keeping the monarchy strong, upon preserving the rights of the aristocracy, on maintaining the existing structure. Among liberals, the emphasis was upon change, moving towards more individual freedom and also towards more constitutional government. Constitutional government would place limits on the monarchy if there was one. Constitutional government would place limits upon the government, whatever form it might take, and constitutional government would enshrine protections of individual rights to life, liberty and property. Now, one of the things that you have to keep in mind is that in the 19th century in Europe at least, almost every state was still a monarchy. Whether it was a constitutional monarchy in Britain or an absolutist monarchy as in Russia or something in between. So, even liberals in their ideology are usually talking about government that involves a king or a queen or an emperor. There was a subset of liberals, the the the most radical group if you will, who were republicans with a small 'r,' you might say. That is, they believed that the ideal state ought to be a republic and a republic is any state that has no monarch. So they advocated the creation of states without monarchs. These republicans are going to have only limited success in the 19th century. Among the Republicans even though, not all Republicans favored full-fledged democracy. The Democrats with a little 'd,' were those who wanted everyone to have a vote, uh, and they are, in in a sense, even more radical than the rest of the liberals.
[18:17]Aside from political notions about, uh, liberalism, there are also some other thinkers who influence liberal ideas about economics. Nowadays, we tend to think of Adam Smith, the 18th century economist who wrote The Wealth of Nations as a a bastion of conservatism. But he actually, in the 19th century, was someone who informed liberal thought about things. Because Adam Smith argued for the idea of laissez-faire, the idea that government, as much as possible, should stay out of the economy, should not regulate the economy. And this was entirely in keeping with liberal thought in the 19th century. Liberal thought favored as little government interference in anything as possible, while conservatives tended to favor a more statist, monarchist approach. Now, along with these major groups, there were some interesting little offshoots that developed in the 19th century, that that tried combining various ideas in interesting ways. One of these was a group of people called the Christian Socialists in Britain. Nowadays, one doesn't normally think of those two things as going together, but in fact, a lot of the humanitarian ideals of Christianity and a lot of the more humanitarian ideals of socialism, not necessarily communism, sort of mesh.
[19:49]And so you had individuals like for example, Charles Kingsley, uh, in Britain, who advocated on the basis of Christian thought, the idea of implementing some socialist practice. And who argued that laissez-faire, uncontrolled, was likely to lead to injustice. Beyond that, there was also a strain of humanitarianism that ran across most political ideologies. Uh, a recognition that there were people in industrialized societies who were suffering, that there were people in agrarian societies that were suffering, and there was a sort of general sense, whether based on Christian faith or on enlightenment principles or some combination of the two, that it was incumbent upon people to look after those less fortunate than themselves.
[20:49]And you can find this, uh, all over the place. Uh, on on the one hand, one certainly finds it in the thinking of Christian socialists and of liberals, but one of the most prominent humanitarians of the 19th century was in fact, Benjamin Disraeli, uh, who became famous as the leader of the British Conservative Party in the latter part of the 19th century. So, in sum, the 19th century is an ideologically rich period, offering all sorts of assessments of history, all sorts of predictions for the future and all sorts of solutions for society's problems, many of them springing from ideas first stimulated by the French Revolution and the conquests of Napoleon. Okay, so now that we've learned a lot about, um, where, you know, people stand in Europe and and basically why we're going to see these revolutions or these liberal uprisings taking place throughout Europe and throughout a lot of the different countries in Europe.
