Key Historical Transformations: 18th-19th Centuries

Posted on Mar 4, 2025 in History

Proto-industrialization

Traditional manufacturing systems for production were the guild system and concentrated manufactures, also in cities. This had an important momentum in the 17th and 18th centuries. The production rate (putting-out system) in the rural environment was developed by merchants looking for more quantity and to increase production. The rural industry contributed to forming an expert workforce (proto-industry).

The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement with the objective of illustrating European society through the diffusion of science, techniques, and thought. It had its roots in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century (Newton, Descartes, and Locke). It sought to achieve individual autonomy and liberty. Its principles were:

  • Trust in reason.
  • Defense of liberty of thought and tolerance.
  • Criticism of the existing social organization.

Its diffusion was achieved through encyclopedias, such as the *Encyclopedia of Sciences, Arts, and Crafts*, published between 1751 and 1773 by two Frenchmen.

Romanticism

Romanticism is the cultural trend that prevailed in Europe during the second half of the 19th century. It is bound to the valuation that people were making of their own language, culture, and history. Its features are:

  1. Subjectivity.
  2. Building an author’s liberty.
  3. Exaltation of feeling and passion.
  4. Return to the national past.

Italian Unification

Italy was divided into eight states: in the North (Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, and Lombardy-Venetia), in the Center (Duchies of Parma, Lucca, Modena, and Tuscany, and the Papal States), and in the South (Kingdom of the Two Sicilies). Italy had an important cultural trend called the *Risorgimento*, a movement formed by writers, musicians, and historians. There were several national positions:

  • Some were centralist democratic republicans (Mazzini).
  • Catholic nationalists (Gioberti) defended the unity of the kingdom around Piedmont (Balbo).
  • Through the newspaper *Il Risorgimento*, a liberal and parliamentary state was promoted (Cavour).

Stages:

  1. Creation of the Kingdom of Italy: Cavour achieved Napoleon III’s recognition of the annexation of the Duchies of Parma, Modena, and Tuscany.
  2. Incorporation of Veneto.
  3. Annexation of Rome and the Vatican Question. Rome became the capital of the state.

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a set of economic transformations based on implementing machinery in production (18th-century Britain). Its characteristics were the modernization of agriculture, socio-demographic changes, and the emergence of industrial capitalism.

U.S. Independence

The revolution and war of independence of the 13 colonies of North America represent the first chapter of the liberal revolutionary cycle. The government introduced taxes on products such as paper and tea, which provoked the Boston Tea Party. Two documents were also enacted: the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. These caused the war between the metropolis and the colonies. The war had two stages:

  1. (1776-77) The American colonists fought the British.
  2. (1778-82) The British, undersupplied in the settlers’ fields, lost and signed peace in the Franco-British Treaty of Versailles (1783), which recognized U.S. independence.

French Revolution (1789)

Causes:

  • Ideological: Criticism of the institutions of the Old Regime provided the ideas for the French Revolution.
  • Social: France’s selfless help in the American Revolution and a general decrease in agricultural prices.
  • Economic: Livestock crisis of 1785, rising prices, unemployment, and a rural livelihood crisis.
  • Political: Confrontation between the immobile monarch and the people, who realized that the state paid for the privileged.

Sources:

  • A single tax for all (but it failed because the privileged opposed paying).
  • Cahiers de doléances (the people gave their views on the state).
  • What Is the Third Estate?

The Restoration

After Napoleon’s defeat, the victorious Great Powers promoted the restoration of absolute monarchies. From a political point of view, the Restoration was the attempt to restore the situation prior to 1789. Ideologically, it was based on a reactionary ideology, traditionalism. Historically, it attempted to ignore the political conquests and social achievements made during the Revolution and the Empire.

Liberalism

Liberalism is a movement with roots in the 18th-century Enlightenment that influenced the events of the French and U.S. Revolutions (1776-78). Its features are:

  1. Defense of civil equality and religious freedom.
  2. Individual economic liberty.
  3. All have rights and duties under a law (constitution).
  4. It defends the aristocracy and the upper class.
  5. It demanded rights from the clergy.