Research Topics
Reform and Reaction
How was it that the French Revolution created a new political vocabulary for Europe? Were the great powers "justified" in thinking they could create a "Concert of Europe" in 1815?
When the Napoleonic Wars came to an end, the great powers met at Vienna in 1814 and 1815 and created a "balance of power" for the purpose of permanent stability. Of course, what they did not grasp was that new social forces -- the middle and working classes of Europe -- would begin to find their own voice in labor movements and aspirations for parliamentary reform in the first half of the 19th century.
- William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned (1798)
Wordsworth asks the reader to give up cold and calculating scientific analysis and instead let Nature be the proper guide.
- Proclamation of Greek Independence (1822)
With the assistance of the Great Powers of Europe, Greece declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
- William Hazlitt, "On the Ignorance of the Learned," 1822
Hazlitt's profound musings on the effects of classical education on students who memorize without understanding.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, Speech On The Reform Bill of 1832, March 2, 1831
Macaulay was active in the passage of the 1832 Reform Bill, which enfranchised the upper levels of the British middle class.
- Francis Place, The People's Charter and National Petition (1838/39)
Although the People's Charter and Petition had been presented to Parliament in 1839, 1842 and again in 1848 it was not until 1867 that the Second Reform Bill enfranchised all male householders.
- Louis Blanc, The Organization of Labour (1840)
According to Blanc, all the evils of society were dependent upon the pressures of competition.