LIBERAL NATIONALISM

Ideas of national unity in the early 19th century Europe

were closely linked to the ideology of liberalism.

z The term liberalism is derived from the Latin root liber

which means freedom.

For the new middle classes liberalism stood for the

freedom the individual and equality of all before law.
 Political meaning of Liberalism
z
• Politically it emphasised the government by consent.

• Since the French Revolution, liberalism had stood for the end of autocracy and
clerical privileges and representative govt. through parliament.

• Nineteenth century liberals also stressed the inviolability of private property.

• Yet there was no universal suffrage. In France the right to vote and to get elected
were granted only to property owning men. Men without property and women
were excluded from political rights.

• Napoleonic code went back to limited suffrage and reduced women to the status
of minor. Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries women and non propertied
men organised opposition movements demanding equal political rights.
 ECONOMIC MEANING OF LIBERALISM
z
• In the economic sphere liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the
abolition of state imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.

• During the 19th century this was a strong demand of the emerging middle
classes.

• In the German speaking regions under the French control, Napoleon’s

administrative measures had created a confederation of 39 states. Each of these
possessed its own currency, and weights and measures.

• A merchant travelling in 1833 from Hamburg to Nuremberg to sell his goods

would have to pass through 11 customs barriers and pay a custom duty of about
5 per cent at each of them.
 Duties were often levied according to the weight or measurement of the
goods. zAs each region had its own system of weights and measures, this
involved time consuming calculations.

 The measure of cloth was elle which in each region stood for a different
length. An elle of textile material bought in Frankfurt would get you 54.7 cm
of cloth, in Mainz 55.1 cm, in Nuremberg 65.5 cm and in Freiburg 53.5 cm.

 Such conditions were viewed as obstacles to economic exchange and

growth by the new commercial classes who argued for the creation of a
unified economic territory allowing the unhindered movement of goods,
people and capital.

 In 1834 a customs union or zolleverein was formed at the initative of

Prussia. The union abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of
currencies from over 30 to 2. The creation of a network of railways further
stimulated mobility, harnessing economic interests to national unification.
 NEW CONSERVATISM AFTER 1815
z
 After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven
by the spirit of conservatism. Conservatism is a political philosophy that
stressed the importance of tradition, established institutions and customs,
and preferred gradual development to quick change.

 Conservatives believed that the established traditional institutions of state

and society (monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property and
family) should be preserved, Many of these conservatives did not propose
a society of pre revolutionary days. Rather they realised that
modernisation could strengthen institutions like monarchy.

 They believed that a modern army, an efficient bureaucracy, a dynamic

economy, the abolition of feudalism and serfdom could strengthen the
autocratic monarchies in Europe.