Conservatism: 1815-1848

• Congress of Vienna met in the fall of 1814 after Napoleon abdicated the throne. 
• Their purpose is settling questions of territory and treaties and negotiations. 
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• France
• Talleyrand 
• England
• Castlereagh
• Austria
• Metternich
• Russia
• Czar Alexander
• Russia refused to discuss the situation in Turkey and the Balkan States.
• England refused to talk about their international sea trade and relations with colonies. 
• Geopolitical
• Politics of territory
• Ex. England during this time is going to refuse to give up former Dutch Colonies in Africa. Russia at the same time is going to refuse to give in to the demands of Eastern European countries. 
• Create a system of strong states around the borders of France. 
• Austrian Netherlands were transfered to the Dutch. 
• Pleases Great Britain because they are allied with the Dutch
• Dutch Republic changes it's name
• Becomes the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• Ruled by the House of Orange. 
• In return, Austria got most of Northern Italy. 
• Metternich has secret police throughout Northern Italy to keep an eye on things. 
• Italy at this time is not a major power. The influence of the Church has been greatly diminished. 
• There was no attempt to restore the Holy Roman Empire. 
• No one bothers to pay attentions to the needs or political desires of the German nationalists. 
• The roots of WWI are set up during the Congress of Vienna
• Alliances that are made
• Shifts in geopolitical holdings
• This will come back to haunt the players involved. 
• Poland was created from land in Austria and Prussia.
• New land was called Congress Poland. 
• Russia now rules former Prussia and much of North Austria in this new kingdom. 
• Louis XVIII returns to France as a constitutional monarch. 
• Napoleon was banned from ever having any rule or leadership in France. 
• Czar Alexander was very religious in his thinking. 
• Created a document called the Holy Alliance
• Said that rule over Eastern Europe was divinely granted. 
• Austria, Prussia sign on.
• England refuses. Castlereagh calls the Holy Alliance "sublime mysticism and nonsense."
• The Holy Alliance basically means that Alexander has the indemnity to squash and anyone he wants to.
• They agreed that they would continue to meet to address international issues. 
• Some historians refer to these major powers as the "Concert of Europe"
• After Vienna, the Concert of Europe met again in 1815 at the Congress of Aix-la-chapelle
• Congress of Aix-la-chapelle
• 1818
• Concert agreed to withdraw a post-war occupation of France
• Accepted the idea of private bankers managing reparations
• Someone has to pay for the cost of war. 
• Britain drifts from the rest of Europe.
• Has to do with their role in the slave trade and the New World. 
• Becomes less concerned with what's going on in Continental Europe 
• 1819
• Metternich and Alexander met again in the state of Galatia. 
• They compose a new alliance called the Protocol of Troppau. 
• Their alliance would have a lot of centralized authority in behalf of the public good. 
• Castelreagh and Talleyrand refuse to participate. 
• They send an Austrian army into Naples, Italy. 
• They install their own king there in Naples. This will be one of those things that comes back to bite people. 
• 1821
• Greece had been occupied by the Ottoman Turks. 
• The Turks had swept in through the Aegean Sea. They had overcome Greece. There was war between the Greeks and the Turks. 
• Turkish army housed it's ammunitions depot in the Parthenon. 
• With the Greeks revolting a dilemma comes up for the major powers in Europe. 
•  They don't really like the Ottoman Turks. They see them as infidels and religious fanatics. 
• At the same time the Ottoman Turks were very powerful in the Middle East. 
• This causes consternation (animosity) between Austria and Russia. 
• Greek nationalists feel very connected to Russia because of the Orthodox Church. 
• Metternich does not like being surrounded by Greece and Russia. 
• Does not want Greece to ally with Russia because Russia could become too powerful. 
• 1825
• Alexander I dies suddenly.  
• Before his death he had become very conservative with his allegience to the Russian Orthodox Church. 
• Rise of secret police forces in Russia and Austria
• Russia - on their own people and in Prussia
• Austria - mainly in Northern Italy
• Many Russian nobility had been educated outside of Russia, mainly in France. 
• Influence of French will play a role in the development of the post czar mentality. 
• Young nobles coming out of French educations tend to be more liberal. 
• Tend to think that power should be spread among the nobility. 
• Use ideas from French Revolution in Russia. 
• Constantine takes over in Russia. 
• The more liberal nobility is hoping that Constantine will liberalize the government. This, however, does not happen because Constantine favors his brother Nicholas as leader and Nicholas I takes the throne.
• There is an attempted revolution when he takes the throne. 
• The Decemberists Revolt was the revolution. 
• It was put down, and Nicholas I became even more conservative than Alexander had been. 
• The Russian people become more isolated and closed off from Western Europe. 
• France
• Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, was the constitutional monarch. 
• Louis XVII had died in prison. 
• Louis XVIII is a very calm voice in French politics. He does not insert any instance of absolute monarchy. However, he is very old. 
• He signs a charter as "The Charter."  It promises a new form of national legislature that will be more democratic. The idea was that there would be people chosen from throughout the ranks of what was formerly called the Third Estate, who would vote on representatives. 
• If you did not own land, you could not vote. A large part of the Third Estate could not vote because they did not own land. 
• Major parts of the Napoleonic Code and Catholicism being nominally the state religion, remained. 
• The Vatican has no direct power in France. 
• The White Terror
• emigres - former members of the second estate who had been kicked off their land during the revolution and now having returned to France under Napoleon, are taking revenge on the former revolutionaries. 
• 1824 Louis XVIII dies. 
• Charles X succeeds him. 
• Charles X ushers in the conservative wave in France. 
• **Copy someone else's notes here**
• There is much opposition to Charles X. 
• Germany
• No one asks the Germans what they think about all of this.
• Prussia is unified and indebted to Russia. 
• There rises a real sense of nationalism in Germany. 
• The Germans have been oppressed by the other countries in Europe. 
• This turns out to be a dangerous thing in the coming century. 
• German nationalism is a direct correspondent to what happens in WWI. 
• "Germany has been wronged and therefore needs to come together as a strong political organization and stand up against the other countries in Europe."
• This German nationalism is really coming out of the German middle class. It is in the universities, business communities, etc. It is a sense that they've been wronged. Underlying resentment grows in German society against Austria, France, and Russia. 
• *Roots of Hitlers hatred towards Austria, France, and Russia come from this.*
• Jews are pushed out of where they are originally from, pushed out of Spain, and then many Jews settle in France, Poland, Austria, and Russia. 
• Germany starts to have secret police, much like Russia and Austria had.  
• England
• Dealing with it's growing empire. 
• It has holdings in the Americas, Asia, India, and Africa.
• "The sun never sets on the British Empire."
• This saying comes about because the British Empire was everywhere.  
• England can't manage food supply. 
• Passes the Corn Laws
• Redefining tariffs on corn and grains. 
• Winds up making those food prices more expensive for English citizens. 
• The rich in England are going to become very rich and the poor are going to become very poor. 
• That disparity is a direct result of industrialization. 
• The capitalists in England became rich because they owned the factories and companies. 
• There were no labor laws. No workers rights. 
• The bosses don't have to pay the people anything. 
• Factories were mainly in northern England
• In Manchester people had enough of not being able to afford food and being paid hardly anything. 
• 80,000 people took to the streets and peacefully protested. 
• Petitioned for the right of all men to vote. 
• Things go poorly. The local forces don't understand what's going on. They fire on the crowd. 11 are killed and hundreds are injured. 
• The British government itself thanked the soldiers for firing on the soldiers and doing a good job. 
• called the Peterloo Massacre. 
• Parliament had nothing to do with the legitimate representation of English people, but it had everything to do with representing those who were rich. 
• Tool of the industrialists. 
• Austria
• Continues to influence Germany.
• Metternich for the next 30 years will rule out of Vienna, influence a wide swath of non-Austrians from Italy through Germany, and will completely ignore the locals. He will completely ignore what the Germans and Italians have to say. And ignores the growing nationalism. 
• Conservatism in the 19th century
• maintaining of traditional aristocratic power.