European Conservatism and Liberalism (19th Century)

European statesmen in the second half of the nineteenth Century were reacting to this experience of revolution and Napoleonic aggression, the need to find a way of organizing their continent once more after the Napoleonic Wars. The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) and its successor, the Concert of Europe, was a part of the conservative attempts to reimpose the old regimes with ancient monarchies and to put away the thoughts of revolution that had rattled the old order (Spielvogel et al.): European Conservatism and Liberalism (19th Century).

Whereas conservatives like Prince Klemens von Metternich promoted stability by substituting authority and tradition, other thinkers like John Stuart Mill and Henry David Thoreau, as liberals, espoused personal freedoms, constitution, and representative law (Smith). These two competing ideologies would determine successes and failures in post-Napoleonic Europe and would provide the seeds of future conflict.

The Congress of Vienna was, in the first place, a conservative success. The Congress was organized under the guidance of Austrian diplomat Prince Metternich to restore the balance of power, raising back those dynasties that were rightful monarchies and suppressing the wave of revolution (Spielvogel et al.). Such insistence on order as a crucial aspect of monarchy and religion is reflected in the text of the so-called Political Confession of Faith by Metternich (1820).

The same sentiments were echoed by Joseph de Maistre in the Divine Origins of Constitutions (1810), where he opined that the source of authority was through divine will rather than popular consent. These perceptions were drawn upon by the conservative policy of the Concert of Europe, who, through the power of diplomacy and, where needed, military actions, kept the status quo intact.

A prime illustration of conservatism suppression efforts was in 1819, with the Carlsbad Resolutions that were instituted and organized by Metternich in order to crack down on the liberal student activity, as well as press censorship in the German Confederation (Kries). These steps served well to stunt the voice of opposition in the short run and hold some semblance of order. According to the conservative views, these were obvious victories: the revolutionary movements were suppressed, the monarchies were preserved in power, and a continental war did not take place between several periods of time (Spielvogel et al.).

However, the lack of flexibility of the conservative system, its inflexibility, and its denial to conform to the increasing need for political participation and national self-determination sealed its destruction. The more liberal voices were loud, the worse the use of repression as the system would do; this further attracted resentment and radicalism. Rapid change and threats to revolutionary ideals had, of course, been forewarned by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1791), but by the mid-century, liberalism had moved too far along to be permanently gagged.

Liberals such as John Stuart Mill in On Liberty (1859) focused on the belief that individual freedoms were the paramount way in which humanity should be treated, with the freedom of minorities highlighted as being in danger of being suppressed by the majority. Although his work appeared after the Congress era, it states the liberal values that were fueling up in the early years of the Century (Burke).

Previous liberal writers such as Sydney Smith (Fallacies of Anti-Reformers, 1824) took on the reactionary views of the ruling class and pointed out the fallacy in anti-reform arguments. Also, Civil Disobedience (1846) by Thoreau promoted the idea of orientation of conscience in contrast to following the blind acceptance of authority that appealed to the reformist-minded people of Europe who opposed absolutism in Europe.

The emergence of liberalism was not a parallel process alone- it was, in a way, a reaction to the sheer conservatism of the post-Napoleonic world. The squashing of political liberties within the German states as well as in Italy helped to create a strengthening of an undercurrent of nationalism and liberal reformism (Spielvogel et al.). Whilst not coherent in their effects, the 1830 revolution and the 1848 revolution were direct consequences of the stresses that the conservative order had attempted but failed to tame. Such revolts have signified the inability of the Concert system to adjust to social and political evolutions.

It was seen as a failure of a Concert of Europe from the liberal point of view since it was all about stability but not about justice and possibilities to please the people. It created peace between the great powers but with the cost of paying no attention to legitimate desires of representation and national identity. This temporary triumph camouflaged underlying instability, which would break out in the 19^th Century and climax into the revolutions and the movements of unification later in the Century.

Work Cited

Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Broadview Press, 2021.

Kries, Steven. “The Romantic Era.” The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History, Florida Atlantic University, 2001.

Smith, Sydney. Fallacies of Anti-reformers. Read Books Ltd, 2015.

Spielvogel, Jackson J., James T. Baker, and Joseph T. Robertson. Western civilization. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA, 2012.

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