History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0493/04931.txt

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$Title{World Civilizations: Industrialization And Western Global Hegemony
The Crisis Of The Late 18th Century And The French Revolution}
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$Author{Stearns, Peter N.; Adas, Michael;Schwartz, Stuart B.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{new
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political
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french
revolutionary
population
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$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.