Samuel

How were political cultures affected by the character of the societies in

which they were located?


The nineteenth century, characterised as a period of deep political and social upheaval, was a fertile
breeding ground for a liberal ideology which was largely shared among the societies of Europe.
Liberalism was a plan for a system of government marked by a desire for constitutionalism and
representative government, greater individual civil liberties and freedom of expression, assembly
and conscience, fairer judicial systems and respect for individual ownership of property. This was
often combined with a desire for greater economic independence, which resulted in the doctrines
similar to those of laissez-faire capitalism. Adherents of liberal thought often belonged to the
bourgeois, new industrialist, classes though this varied and in theory liberalism as a creed was
fairly consistent across Europe. However, this does not take into account the extent to which
individual societies shaped the actions and justifications of the liberal movements within them.
Depending on conditions such as the degree of economic development, the immediate historical
context and political events, cultures of liberalism were compromised, changed or maintained
according to the political goals of those who sought to use this ideology to alter government and the
changes that needed to be made to liberalism in order to achieve those goals.

In the United Kingdom, liberalism was shaped by the social change which went hand in hand with
the Industrial Revolution. Growing British prosperity and influence was directly attributed to the
implementation of liberal policies such as extending the franchise, repealing the Corn Law and
facilitating opportunities for the bourgeoisie to play a greater role in local and national government.
Initially, there was also a purely moral element to British liberalism middle-class virtues such as
thrift and hard work were ideologically prioritised over profitable economic activity. Success was
defined in terms of moral achievement and entrepreneurs were praised for their individual qualities
and held up as examples of the new breed of Britons which earned prosperity through virtuousness.
One strand of this liberalism became a specific struggle against an unproductive aristocracy, while
another tried to impose this Puritanical morality on the working class in order to create a society of
virtuous and upwardly-mobile citizens. Writers such as Samuel Smile and Herbert Spencer were key
exponents of this idealistic worldview, which gradually changed into a more utilitarian one once it
was no longer viable to blame societal condition on moral failure. Nevertheless, a strong moral
component remained in British liberalism owing to the historical and religious context in which the
political culture had developed in. While a burgeoning empire and economy gave credence to this
philosophy, encouraging individual autonomy and laissez-faire capitalism, towards the end of the
nineteenth century economic slowdown liberalism was forced to be redefined to address questions
of social justice which had previously been able to be ignored. Therefore, even though British
liberalism became a template for liberals across Europe, it contained elements which were peculiar
to the society in which it was located. A history of relative stability and political transformation over
a period of time, a growing middle class and political institutions which were by and large friendly
towards liberalism all combined to create a self-righteous and deterministic brand of liberal thinking.

Intellectual exchanges of liberal ideas were mostly reciprocal in this period since nations across
Europe were all trying to develop unique and satisfactory political identities more or less
Samuel
contemporaneously, but it is unsurprising that the French Revolution was vitally important to the
development of liberalism. In France and across Europe, the Revolution both marked the beginning
of increasing bourgeois political prominence but it also fuelled a backlash against such changes in
the political landscape. Memory of the violence of the French Revolution and the ensuing
Napoleonic Wars left the reactionary establishment fearing any potential radicalism of the new,
increasingly prominent, bourgeois order. In addition, it actually turned the liberals against the radical
socialists because a liberal agenda, one of adapting existing societal mores and institutions to widen
access to political power, was threatened by radical plans to overthrow the state. Another legacy of
the explicitly socially-oriented French Revolution was that French politics in the nineteenth century
were more concerned with matters such as the condition of the working class. The radical wing
pushed for a fulfilment of the voiced aims of the Revolution and an end to the injustices of liberal
laissez-faire capitalism. The effect of this strong and dynamic Socialist movement on liberalism in
France during this period was to pull it towards the left. Bourgeois meritocracy was still the
attractive ideology, but leaders like Bourgeois and Durkheim sought to redefine it in order to try to
change collective economic behaviour and so create a new moral order. Culminating in Durkheims
sociology, French liberalism sought to blend politics and economic activity with moral necessity to
create a controlled political system which still retained the advantages and longevity of democracy
and individualism while operating collectively and fairly. This liberalism descended directly from the
bourgeois dominance caused by the circumstances of the French Revolution a century before and
the economic development which provided opportunities for political transformation, yet it was also
modified by the ideals of those same circumstances liberty, equality, brotherhood echoing
through the century.

It has been argued that liberalism in Russia has its roots in the rule of the autocrats Peter the Great
and Catherine the Great. Obviously, the coherent concept of liberalism had not yet been formed, but
the introduction of more rationalist governmental systems and the development of cultural
revolutions (borrowed from Western Europe) under the two monarchs had profound effects on
what was later to become Russian liberalism. Perhaps the most important factor which made
liberalism in Russia distinct from that of Western European countries was the influence of the
Slavophile movement. The Slavophiles were jealously protective of their differences to Liberal
thinkers but at the same time they shared many of the same objectives and ideals. For example,
Slavophiles worked for the establishment of freedom of expression in Russia much as the Liberals
did, yet they did so with a more collectivist understanding and a certain idealisation of the peasantry
as the model for virtuous living. Liberalism in Russia was also affected by being forced to mature in
the adverse conditions of autocracy and economic backwardness which precluded a substantial
bourgeoisie from emerging to drive the process of economic and political liberalisation. The liberal
intellectuals who did become prominent, such as Granovskii, Chicherin and Kavelin, shared the
Western desires for greater individualism (with special emphasis on the centrality of freedom of
conscience), better political representation and other ideals but they thought that their
circumstances were unique. They saw themselves as isolated intellectual elites fighting a sea of
backwardness perhaps a similar situation which their counterparts in Germany faced and they
failed to arouse the popular support necessary to effect significant political change. In the long run,
caught between the suppression of the conservative, Tsarist establishment and the populist
movements of Slavophilism, Cossack Don reformers and Socialism, Russian liberalism failed to
engage adequately with society to offer a decisive alternative vision of social and political change.
Samuel

The effect of Italian society on the development of an Italian style of liberalism was actually quite
limiting, and prevented the development of an effectual liberal political class. From the outset
liberalism was not a vehicle for social and political change because its proponents were primarily
landowners who wished to develop economically without major social upheaval. Not only did the
fact that Italy had an overwhelmingly agrarian economy until the end of the nineteenth century
preclude the growth of a new industrial elite which was keen on political reform to consolidate their
position in society, the path of economic development which Italy took actually favoured the
establishment. Radical liberals joined secret societies such as the Carbonari and the Freemasons to
try to oppose the status quo, but in general what could loosely be called an Italian bourgeoisie
sought to assimilate itself into the ranks of the old regime rather than challenge the old order. This
resulted in, intellectually and politically, a much weaker culture of liberalism. These progressive
landowners sought to carry out pragmatic liberal reform from above in the hope of spurring greater
economic productivity through the removal of artificial barriers such as feudalism and trade barriers.
Surprisingly, Italy was united under a liberal government, but it was an authoritarian one this was
necessitated by the circumstances of war with Austria and then significant internal turmoil.
Therefore the situation dictated that Italian liberalism was a subversion of the liberalism which
prevailed in other nations. Rather than a culture of greater autonomy and freedom allowing natural
laws of economics and human behaviour to remodel society, liberalism in Italy was marked by
centralisation, repression and increased social injustice. While ostensibly the means and aims of
liberalism were unchanged, in reality the force of circumstances surrounding the unification of Italy
created a liberal ideal which not only was unable to carry out social transformation but also paved
the way for Fascism to take hold in the early twentieth century. Had a credible intellectual and
political elite emerged from a class of industrialisers, a stable democracy might have been
preserved, but the character of Italian society hindered this.

In a similar manner, the study of German liberalism in this period is overshadowed by the knowledge
the horrors of war and National Socialism which were to follow. However, if the temptation to
therefore paint German liberalism as a failure is resisted, it is found that the character of German
society did not limit the development of a liberal political culture there. Even after the 1850s, when
Germany was well into industrial development, the conservative Junker class continued to dominate
German politics even though it was slowly losing ground to the new industrialists. Before the
revolutions of 1830 and 1848, issues surrounding German national identity and constitutionalism
had not been particularly significant Germany was a messy conglomerate of disparate and small
communities containing vastly different terrains, living conditions and even languages. Yet after
these revolutions all the political persuasions were challenged by unfamiliar debates surrounding the
nature of the Volk and the direction that Germany ought to take in an industrialising and increasing
interconnected world. German liberals were able to agree on their shared opposition to items such
as restrictions on the civil liberties of individuals or a societal structure that was harmfully outdated.
Yet they were unable to establish a consensus on what it meant to be a German liberal, and as a
result the liberal movement in Germany harboured some serious divisions between its proponents
on matters such as economic freedom, centralisation and constitutionalism. They sided with the
conservatives against popular uprising and yet were restricted by the close grip on politics which the
aristocrats retained. These internal contradictions would in the end tear German liberalism apart,
especially after the fall of Bismarck. The liberal movement did have some significant achievements
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witness the abolishing of feudal-style restrictions, the creation of a single market and the
development of an economic culture of superb growth and played a significant role in German
unification, but its own success would come back to haunt it. When pressured by the demands of
the nationalism and the large-scale capitalism which it had helped create, the Liberal movement
failed to maintain the balance between the competing factions of German society in order to
complete its political agenda.

In conclusion, while liberalist ideologies shared many common features, the conditions of each
society in which the culture of liberalism was developing played a central role in determining the
nature of liberalism in that country and in allowing that version to succeed or fail in its political aims.
While both Great Britain and France were relatively mature liberal democracies by the end of the
nineteenth century, their liberal cultures were different because of the context of the wider society
in which they had developed. France, following in the mould of the ideals of the French Revolution,
had developed a liberalism which was more concerned with social justice than that of Britain
where instead Socialist movements played the role of championing the collective masses against the
perceived injustices of bourgeois liberalism. Germany, Italy and Russia, on the other hand, were
areas were either there was limited development of liberalism as a philosophy and as a culture or
where the formation of a liberal society was incomplete. Liberalism as a coherent ideology for
societal and political change was not lacking, but the conditions present in each individual society
prevented the development of such a culture.


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