The Bourgeoisie and Liberalism

Abstract

It has been argued, quite persuasively if somewhat perversely, that despite the economic, demographic, political and other changes of the nineteenth century, the old élites retained their dominance in society and in the state.¹ Our investigations into land ownership and the civil and military bureaucracies would seem to support this claim. The French Revolution, while reshaping political structures, appears to have had only a very limited impact on the élites who were in control. In these final chapters we shall select four themes in the nineteenth century which illuminate the role of the bourgeoisie in politics. The French revolution of 1830 is an irresistible choice, combining both liberal and ‘bourgeois’ aspects:² nineteenth-century liberalism was apparently quintessentially bourgeois. We shall also review the role of the liberals in Prussia, Italy and Russia, taking as our focus the apparent predominance of liberal parliamentarianism in Prussia after 1848 and its rapid evaporation in the 1860s, the significance of regional divisions in Italian politics and finally the absence of the middle class as a political force in Russia. Obviously other aspects could have been chosen and it might have been desirable to trace the evolution of the influence of different sections of the bourgeoisie over the whole century. Realistically, however, such a project would entail a separate book and it is hoped that the four topics chosen will acquaint the reader with aspects of current debates among historians.