$Unique_ID{how04931} $Pretitle{} $Title{World Civilizations: Industrialization And Western Global Hegemony The Crisis Of The Late 18th Century And The French Revolution} $Subtitle{} $Author{Stearns, Peter N.; Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.} $Affiliation{} $Subject{new revolution political western french revolutionary population century europe popular see pictures see figures } $Date{1992} $Log{See Peasant Hovel*0493101.scf See Portrait Of Napoleon*0493102.scf See Europe During Napoleon's Era*0493103.scf } Title: World Civilizations: Industrialization And Western Global Hegemony Book: Chapter 29: Industrialization of the West, 1760-1914 Author: Stearns, Peter N.; Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B. Date: 1992 The Crisis Of The Late 18th Century And The French Revolution The industrial transformation of Western society raises an obvious conundrum: Did it flow naturally from the previous shifts in this civilization, or was it a brutal jolt? The answer is "both." Western society had been changing rapidly since the 15th century through commercialization, the growth of the nation-state, and cultural redefinition. This is why the West was able to industrialize first, with no prior models to follow. At the same time, industrialization did involve important new directions that caused great strain, some of which continue to cause strain even in the late 20th century. This is why it is vital to see how a period of upheaval emerged, partly as a result of previous shifts and partly as a result of new factors that forced further, and sometimes agonizing, innovation. Forces Of Change The explosion of political revolution in France and the Industrial Revolution in Britain at the end of the 18th century seemed to some Western observers particularly startling in that so much of the previous century had been placid, at least on the surface. Western nations had quarreled over colonies, but most of the 18th-century wars had been fairly sedate, and the ascending position of the West in the wider world was unchallenged. Few major popular rebellions challenged the absolute monarchs of the continent, though it was true that the French monarchy, unable to reform a tax structure marked by exemptions for nobles and the Church, showed signs of stress. Parliamentary politics in Britain drew wide consensus, save for some agitation for wider voting rights in the 1760s. Intellectual ferment, however, ran high. Enlightenment thinkers challenged regimes that did not grant full religious freedom, or that insisted on aristocratic privilege, and a few called for widespread popular voice in government. A gap had opened between leading intellectuals and established institutions, and this would play a role in the revolutions that lay ahead (as would a similar gap in revolutions elsewhere in the world after 1900). Enlightenment thinkers agreed that traditional inequalities in law, which gave certain groups rights by birth, were wrong. They wanted governments to serve the general good and to protect various freedoms. Some also wanted governments to be open to participation by the people at large, through some kind of democratic vote. These ideas, a fundamental challenge to Europe's absolute monarchies, established churches, and privileged upper classes, lay behind much of the political agitation that drew the 18th century to a close. A second source of disruption was occurring more quietly, at all social levels. Western Europe experienced a huge population jump after about 1730. Within half a century the population of France rose by 50 percent, that of Britain and Prussia rose a full 100 percent. This population revolution was itself caused by relatively stable conditions, including better border policing by the efficient nation-state governments that reduced the movement of disease-bearing animals. More important still was improved nutrition resulting from the growing use of the potato and other crops of American origin. Westerners had long resisted these new crops, but now shifted to them in order to allow more secure subsistence, often on smaller plots of land. The potato was particularly important because of the calories it yielded on limited acreage. These various factors reduced the death rate, particularly for children; instead of over 40 percent of all children dying by age two, the figure by the 1780s was nearer 33 percent. More children surviving also meant more people living to have children of their own, so the birthrate increased as well. Population pressure at this level always has dramatic impact. In China recurrent population pressure had historically produced growing popular unrest, often leading to the collapse of a dynasty. In medieval Europe population growth had ultimately outstripped available resources, leading to subsequent decline. The 18th-century population surge, however, produced more innovative responses, though it certainly heightened popular grievances as well. Upper-class families, faced with more surviving children, tried to tighten their grip on existing offices. It became harder, in the later 18th century, for a nonaristocrat to gain a high post in the Church or state. This reaction helped feed demands for change by other groups. Business families faced with more children often decided to expand their operations, sometimes adopting new equipment in order to spur business success. Here was a source of a new willingness to take risks. For some ordinary peasants, population pressure caused a new interest in expanding market agriculture, as some peasants began to acquire more land and employ wage labor in order to take advantage of new opportunities. Above all, population pressure drove many people into the working-class proletariat, as they lost any real chance of inheriting property. These people were eager to take advantage of new labor opportunities simply to survive. They thus formed the nucleus of a new working class in agriculture and, above all, in manufacturing. [See Peasant Hovel: A hovel on the beach at Kiukiang (China). Over the door is the character for "happiness".] The population growth of the 18th century prompted a rapid expansion of domestic manufacturing throughout western Europe and also, by 1800, in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of people became full- or part-time producers of textile and metal products, working at home but in a capitalist system in which materials, work orders, and ultimate sales depended on urban merchants. This development has been called a process of protoindustrialization because of the importance of new market relationships and sheer manufacturing volume in advance of the technological revolution associated with industrialization. Some societies in the 20th century, still predominantly rural, may be in a somewhat analogous protoindustrial phase, so the concept may have wider applicability. Population upheaval and the spread of a propertyless class working, where possible, for money wages certainly had a sweeping impact on a variety of behaviors in Western society, including North America. Many villagers began to modify their dress in favor of more urban styles - suggesting an early form of new consumer interest. Among groups with little or no property, the authority of parents began to decline because the traditional threat of denying inheritance now had no meaning. Youthful independence became more marked, and while this showed particularly in economic behavior as many young people now looked for jobs on their own, the new defiance of authority might have had political implications as well. Sexual behavior changed as the West began, around 1780, to experience something of a sexual revolution particularly among the lower classes in cities and countryside. More young people began to have sex before marriage - resulting, among other things, in a rapid increase in the percentage of illegitimate births, which rose to as much as 10 percent of all births. There were more general signs that sexual expression was becoming more important, at least to young men, who now sought sexual pleasures to compensate for some of the uncertainties of life in other respects. Some women, saddled with unwanted children, may have suffered from this sexual revolution in which they often participated in hope of marriage, but others may have seen sex as a new badge of individual pleasure seeking. Certainly, traditional rules seemed to be changing. The upheavals triggered by population growth plus the continuing spread of Enlightenment ideas had two more sweeping consequences, both of which became visible during the 1780s. First, the surge of revolutionary protest developed essentially because new grievances and changing beliefs butted against institutions that were incapable of major change, such as France's lackluster absolute monarchy, and against the inflexibility of many existing leaders who focused on closing off opportunities for people in other social layers. Second, the economic changes involved in protoindustrialization turned to outright economic revolution with a spate of fundamental new inventions developed primarily in Britain. Decades Of Ferment: The Tide Of Revolution, 1789-1830 The placid politics of the 18th century was shattered by a series of revolutions that took shape in the 1770s and 1780s. The wave of revolutions reflected the disparity between social and ideological change on the one hand, and business-as-usual politics on the other. It also caught up a large number of social groups with very diverse motives, some eager to use revolution to promote further change, some hoping that the same revolution would allow them to turn back the clock and recover older values. The American Revolution The first concrete development occurred when Britain's Atlantic colonies rebelled in 1775 in what was primarily a war for independence rather than a full-fledged revolution. A significant minority of American colonists resisted Britain's attempt to impose new taxes and trade controls on the colonies after 1763. Many settlers also resented restrictions on free movement into the frontier areas. Britain's moves also triggered objections in principle, as colonists invoked British political theory to argue that they should not be taxed without representation. Resentment against British rule and advocacy of national independence and self-government, were supplemented by internal grievances. Crowding along the eastern seaboard led some younger men to seek new opportunities, including political office, that turned them against the older colonial leadership. Growing commerce and money-making antagonized some farmers and artisans, who sought ways to defend older values of greater social equality and community spirit. Colonial rebels set up a new government that issued the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and also authorized a formal army to pursue its war. The persistence of the revolutionaries (who introduced some tactics such as informal guerrilla-type raids on the more structured British army - tactics that would be developed more fully in 20th-century independence wars) combined with British strategic mistakes and significant aid from the French government designed to embarrass its key enemy. After several years of fighting the United States won its freedom, and in 1787 set up a new constitutional structure based on Enlightenment principles, with checks and balances between the legislature and the executive and formal guarantees of individual liberties. Voting rights, though limited, were widespread, and the new regime was for a time the most radical in the world. Socially, the revolution accomplished less; slavery was untouched in its strongholds. And new American leaders, bent on solidifying their nation, deliberately shunned elaborate contacts with the Old World of Europe. Nevertheless, American success did spur many Europeans to a sense that political upheaval could pay off. 1709 The next step in the revolutionary spiral focused on France. It was the French Revolution that most clearly set in motion the political restructuring of western Europe. Several factors conjoined in the 1780s in what became something of a classic pattern of revolutionary causation. Ideological insistence on change won increasing attention from the mid-18th century onward. Enlightenment thinkers urged the need to limit the powers of the Catholic church, to weaken the hold of the aristocracy - including their tax privileges - and possibly to give new political voice to the common man. They attacked the inefficiency and arbitrary behavior of the monarchy. Social changes reinforced the ideological challenge. Some middle-class people, proud of their business or professional success, wanted a greater political role. Many peasants, pressed by population growth, wanted fuller freedom from landlord exactions, while resenting the large estates directly controlled by aristocrats and the Church. These grievances added up to a social attack on remnants of manorialism and the privileged position of the Church. At the same time growing commercial activity produced its own discontent. Many peasants were upset by the expansion of a minority of villagers, bent on buying land and dividing village common holdings in the name of market exploitation. Many craftworkers resisted the commercial motives of some artisans, who tried to speed their labor in order to take advantage of sales opportunities. The revolution, in other words, would combine protest by people rising in the market economy, who sought commensurate political voice, with protest by people who were suffering and who sought a return to older values - a "moral economy" in which commercial profit seeking and individualism would be set aside. Amid the ferment, the government and upper classes proved incapable of reform. Aristocrats indeed tightened their grip in response to their own population pressure, while the government proved increasingly ineffective - a key ingredient in any successful revolution. Finally, a sharp economic slump in 1787 and 1788, triggered by bad harvests, set the seal on revolution. The French king, Louis XVI, called a meeting of the traditional parliament in order to consider tax reform for his financially pinched regime. But middle-class representatives, inspired by Enlightenment ideals, insisted on turning this assembly (which had not met for 1 1/2 centuries) into a modern parliament, with voting by head rather than by estate and within majority representation for nonnoble property owners. The fearful king caved in after some street riots in Paris in the summer of 1789, and the revolution was underway. Events in the summer were crucial. The new assembly, with its middle-class majority, quickly turned to devising a new political regime. A stirring Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen proclaimed freedom of thought. A popular riot stormed a political prison, the Bastille, on July 14, in what became the Revolution's symbol - though ironically, almost no prisoners were in fact to be found. Soon after this, peasants, stirred by rumors of brigandage, but also correctly afraid that Paris would ignore their needs, seized manorial records and many landed estates. This triggered a general proclamation abolishing manorialism, giving peasants clear title to much land and also establishing equality under the law. While aristocrats survived for some time, the principles of aristocratic rule were undercut. Amid all this excitement, the French uprising, like most revolutions, went through an initial moderate phase, and in this case (unlike 20th-century revolts where this first phase was typically short-lived) many lasting gains were pushed through. Peasants did not get all the land, but they were free from all traces of serfdom. Not only was aristocratic privilege abolished, but the privileges of the Church were also attacked, and Church property was seized. A new constitution proclaimed individual rights, including freedom of religion, press, and property. A strong parliament was set up to limit the king, with about one-half the adult male population - those with property - eligible to vote. Here, then, was a sketch of a new political system, with an elected legislature in charge of policy and a constitution limiting arbitrary state action. At the same time, traditional local barriers to government authority - such as aristocratic courts - were torn down, so government officials won greater contact with ordinary citizens. The French Revolution: Radical Chords And Authoritarian Consolidation By 1792 the liberal regime began to turn more radical. Initial reforms provoked massive opposition in the name of church and aristocracy, and civil war broke out in several parts of France. Monarchs in Britain, Prussia, and Austria trumpeted their opposition to this revolutionary nightmare, and France soon faced European war as well. The revolutionary leadership was also beleaguered by economic chaos at home, which caused further popular rioting. All these pressures led to a takeover by radical leaders, who wanted to press the Revolution further and to set up firmer authority in the Revolution's defense. The monarchy was abolished and the king was decapitated on the guillotine - a new device introduced, Enlightenment-fashion, to provide more humane executions but instead became a symbol of revolutionary bloodthirst. The radical leadership also attacked enemies at home and abroad. Several thousand people were executed in what was named the Reign of Terror - even though by later standards it was relatively mild. Besides stiffening the Revolution and becoming a symbol of revolutionary excess, this radical phase introduced a new rhetoric. Its new constitution, never fully put into practice, proclaimed universal adult male suffrage. It discussed mass education and social reform, though it never envisaged an attack on private property. More concretely, the radicals introduced a metric system of weights and measures, the product of the rationalizing genius of the Enlightenment. They also proclaimed universal military conscription, on grounds that now that all citizens were free, they owed loyalty and service to the government that assured their freedom. And revolutionary armies, swelled by new numbers and also new officers who had not been able to rise in the aristocrat-dominated forces of the old regime, began to win major success. Not only were France's enemies driven out, but the revolution began to win new territory in the Low Countries, Italy, and Germany - spreading revolutionary gains still farther in western Europe. A new spirit of popular nationalism surfaced during the Revolution's radical phase. Many French people felt an active loyalty to the new regime, to a state they believed they helped create. Nationalism could replace older loyalties to church or locality. Radical leadership was itself toppled in 1795, and after four years of more moderate government the final phase of the Revolution was ushered in with the victory of Napoleon Bonaparte, a leading general who soon converted the revolutionary republic to an authoritarian empire. Under Napoleon parliament was reduced to a rubber stamp, while a powerful police system limited freedom of expression. However, Napoleon confirmed othereliberal gains, including religious freedom, while enacting substantial equality - though for men, not women - in a series of new law codes. To train bureaucrats, a centralized system of secondary schools and universities developed. [See Portrait Of Napoleon: A curious portrait of Napoleon, showing two aspects of his face. From the painting by Girodet-Troison, entitled "Napoleon, 8 Mars, 1812".] Goaded by insatiable ambition, Napoleon devoted most of his attention not to consolidation of the Revolution at home, though this was one of his key achievements, but to expansion abroad. A series of wars brought France against all of Europe's major powers, including Russia. At its height around 1812, the French empire directly held or controlled as satellite kingdoms most of western Europe, and its success spurred some reform measures even in Prussia and Russia. The French Empire crumbled after this point. An attempt to invade Russia in 1812 failed miserably, as French armies perished in the cold Russian winter even as they pushed deep into the empire. An alliance system organized by Britain crushed the emperor definitively in 1814 and 1815. Yet Napoleon's campaigns had done more than dominate European diplomacy for 1 1/2 decades. They had also spread key revolutionary legislation - the idea of equality under the law, the attack on privileged institutions such as aristocracy, church, or craft guilds - throughout much of western Europe. The Revolution and Napoleon encouraged popular nationalism outside of France as well as within. French military success continued to draw great excitement at home. Elsewhere, French armies tore down local governments, as in Italy and Germany, which whetted appetites for national unity. And the sheer fact of French invasion made many people more conscious of loyalty to their own nation; popular resistance to Napoleon, in parts of Spain and Germany, played a role in the final French defeat. [See Europe During Napoleon's Era: This map shows the disposition of the countries of Europe during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era.] A Conservative Settlement And The Revolutionary Legacy The allies who had brought the proud emperor down met at Vienna in 1815 to reach a peace settlement that would make further revolution impossible. They did not try to punish France too sternly, on grounds that the European balance of power should be restored. This act of generosity helped promote peace in Europe for many decades. Still, a series of stronger powers were established around France, which meant gains for Prussia within Germany and for the hitherto obscure nation of Piedmont in northern Italy. Italian and German nationalists were disappointed, but the old map was not restored and the realignments did ultimately facilitate unifications. Britain gained new colonial territories, confirming its lead in the scramble for empire in the wider world. Russia, newly important in European affairs as its own expansionist momentum resumed, confirmed its hold over most of Poland. These territorial adjustments kept Europe fairly stable for almost half a century, a major achievement given the crisscrossed rivalries that long characterized Western society. But the Vienna negotiators were much less successful in promoting internal peace. The idea was to restore monarchy in France and to link conservative powers in a new war on revolutionary radicalism. A more formal conservative sentiment grew up in reaction to the quarter century of upheaval, urging the importance of king and church and arguing that change should come slowly and gradually, not through protest or rationalistic constitution-making. The revolutionary era had stirred forces that could not be contained by the Vienna settlement or the conservative alliance formed by Napoleon's opponents. New political movements arose to challenge conservatism. All the forces promoted by the French Revolution, many of them following from Enlightenment political ideas, grew into more formal political movements during the 1820s and 1830s throughout the Western world. Liberals focused primarily on issues of political structure, as they sought ways to limit state interference in individual life and also representation of propertied people in government. Liberals urged the importance of constitutional rule and protection for freedoms of religion, press, and assembly. They wanted parliaments to represent middle-class voters and check the power of kings. Many liberals also sought economic reforms, including better education that would promote industrial growth. Radicals accepted the importance of most liberal demands, but they also wanted wider voting rights. Some advocated outright democracy. They also urged some social reforms in the interest of the lower classes. A smaller current of socialism urged an attack on private property in the name of equality and an end to capitalist exploitation of the working man. Nationalists, finally, though often allied with one of the other "isms" urged the importance of national unity and glory. Nationalists spoke of their nation's liberty, and easily joined the wider liberal current, but they valued a collective identity that could conflict with liberal individualism. Each of the new political movements gained ground in pressing Europe's established order; each would have a long life in Western political history. The key Western political issues shifted from the development of absolute monarchy to constitutional structure and political participation. While most articulate political agitators were drawn from the middle class and related student groups who sought a new voice for themselves as opposed to continued aristocratic dominance, popular protesters picked up new political demands as well. Many urban artisans in particular, worried about the continued inroads of commercialism on their older values of cooperation and skill and conscious of a growing threat from industrial machines that might unseat the artisans altogether, provided a recurrent force in the streets, matching the ideological leadership offered by the middle class. Artisans had a solid tradition of organization, and they could draw demands from the sense of traditional justice they now saw under attack; they were an ideal revolutionary force. Revolutions broke out in several places in 1820 and again in 1830. The 1820 revolts involved a nationalist uprising in Greece against Ottoman rule - a key step in gradually dismantling the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans - and a rebellion in Spain. Revolutions in 1830 struck closer to the heart of Western society. The French rebelled again, installing a different king and a somewhat more liberal monarchy, though not producing a final balance among the conflicting ingredients of French politics. Risings also occurred in key states in Italy and Germany, though without durable result; a revolution in Belgium produced a liberal regime and a newly independent nation. The Belgian Revolution of 1830 was a classic example of how new political forces could combine. Belgium had been placed under Dutch rule at the Congress of Vienna. Belgian nationalists, building on religious and language differences, found national independence an obvious target. Liberals chafed under Dutch restrictions on freedom of the press and teaching. Urban artisans, worried about rapid commercial change as Belgium began to develop factory production, sought new political rights. Britain and the United States also participated in the process of political change, though without revolution. Key states in the United States granted universal adult male suffrage and other political changes in the 1820s, leading to the election of a popular president, Andrew Jackson, in 1828. In Britain the Reform Bill of 1832, prodded by considerable popular agitation, gave the parliamentary vote to most members of the middle class. This change ushered in a period in which urban governments gained new powers as they came under control of business leaders, while the aristocrats who still controlled the national ministries began to adopt measures that increasingly favored commercial development. Through the 1830s the tides of revolution and the larger impact of new political movements had produced important changes in Western society. Regimes in France, Britain, Belgium, the United States, and several other countries now had solid parliaments (Congress in the United States), at least some guarantees for individual rights against arbitrary state action, considerable religious freedom not only for various Christian sects but also for Jews, and a voting system ranging from democratic (for men) to upper middle-class. Even more widely, movements representing liberal and other political views had spread throughout Western society, operating as political parties in the liberalized states, as agitators in central Europe. The revolutionary sequence had not ended - a major outburst was still to come in 1848 - but it had already begun to interact with the other great Western transformation, the rise of industrialization.