Liberty Leading the People, a painting by Eugène Delacroix depicting the July Revolution in France, 1830. Public domain image.
In The Age of Revolution, British historian Eric Hobsbawm addresses the profound transformations that occurred in Europe and the wider world from 1789 to 1848. These processes destabilized an order based on absolute states, monarchical rule, and mercantilist economies. In their place came the consolidation of political liberalism, middle-class power, and industrial capitalism on liberal foundations. In this setting, Hobsbawm emphasizes two movements: the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. The Napoleonic Era, the European Restoration, and the revolutions of 1820, 1830, and 1848 formed part of the same cycle of upheaval.
According to Hobsbawm, the Industrial Revolution represented the transformation of the foundations of economic growth. It created a low-cost mass-production system built on cotton, coal, steam engines, and rail transport. According to Hobsbawm, the advance of industry required fewer intellectual reformulations than political revolution did. England pioneered this process because it had already introduced capitalism into the agrarian economy, had practically monopolized the global consumer market, and had ample capital available for investment.
The other movement that, for Hobsbawm, deserves emphasis was the French Revolution. It grew out of several crises in the Bourbon monarchy. Enlightenment criticism weakened political legitimacy, estate inequality sharpened social conflict, and excessive government spending exposed a fiscal crisis that reform attempts failed to solve. With the fall of Louis XVI’s monarchy, radical, conservative, and moderate groups reached power in turn. These new regimes dismantled pillars of absolutism such as estate privilege and the divine right of kings. This rupture led France to face opposition from neighboring monarchies.
Successful campaigns against reactionary foreign coalitions gave Napoleon Bonaparte prestige, and he eventually became France’s dominant leader from 1799. As consul and later emperor, he reorganized the nation, defeated most external enemies, and dominated the European continent through governments favorable to him. More than once, Napoleonic France sought to defeat England, but the English Channel remained an insurmountable obstacle. After bloody battles, including a failed invasion of Russian territory, the French were completely defeated. Napoleon was sent into exile twice, and European leaders sought to redesign the continent on conservative foundations.
At the Congress of Vienna, Austria, Russia, Prussia, England, and France itself, under Louis XVIII and Talleyrand, affirmed the legitimacy of restoring monarchies deposed by force during the Napoleonic Era. If threats arose against these monarchies, the powers would intervene to protect them. The return to the pre-revolutionary status quo did not extend to Europe’s borders. They were redrawn to ensure a balance between the powers, preventing one state from growing at another’s expense. Defeated France, for example, received a moderate settlement that allowed it to retain great-power status. To contain it, the German Confederation was created.
The Vienna order, articulated by Europe’s political elites, faced repeated challenges in the following decades because liberal revolutions spread across Europe. In general, these movements sought constitutions, as in Portugal, Spain, and the German lands, or political autonomy and independence, as in Greece, Belgium, and Poland. Revolutionary sentiment peaked in 1848, when revolts broke out in several places at once. The revolutions of 1820, the revolutions of 1830, and the revolutions of 1848 had varied outcomes, but they weakened absolutist structures and advanced the political rise of the middle class and industrial bourgeoisie.