Revolutions and State Formation: Theories and Concepts in Modern European History

1. Revolutions and State Formation in
Europe, 1789-1871
Dr Christos Aliprantis
American College of Thessaloniki – Anatolia College

2. Revolutions and State Formation: Theories
and Concepts in Modern European History
 A) An introduction to Nineteenth century
European history
 B) Theories of Revolutions and State
Formation
 C) Outline of main concepts

3. Nineteenth Century Europe: An Introduction
 From the French Revolution (1789) to the German(/Italian) unification (1871)
 “Age of Revolution”, “Age of Capital” (Eric Hobsbawm)
 “The Birth of the Modern World” (C. A. Bayly)
 “The Transformation of the World” (Jürgen Osterhammel)
 1. French revolutionary decade; revolutions of 1820-21, 1830-31, 1848-49
 2. Napoleonic wars and Restoration (1815): Balance of Power
 3. Industrial revolution and economic transformation
 4. The Social Question and the labour movement
 5. Nationalism and nation-building
 6. Domestic state developments (Britain, France, Austria, Russia, Ottoman Empire)

4. .

5. 1. Revolutions: 1789-99, 1820-21, 1830-31, 1848-49
 France, 1789: economic crisis; crisis of representation
 General Estates => Constituent Assembly (1789-91)
 Enlightenment? Bourgeois class? Peasants’ revolution?
 Political debates (Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Jacobins)
 Moderate reforms => Legislative Assembly => war
 Radicalization => “Terror” (1793-94) => Committee of
Public Safety, emergency conditions, massive executions
 Republican regime (purges of royalists); nation in arms
 Directory (1795-99) => return to moderation => French
military successes abroad => undermined this regime

6. .
 Legacies of republicanism, constitutionalism, liberalism,
radicalism (incl. origins of communism), secularism
 1820-21: revolutions in southern Europe: Spain, Portugal
(& Latin America), Piedmont, Naples/Sicily, Greece
 Wars; constitutional demands; creation of new states
 1830-31: France, Belgium, central Italy, Russian Poland
 Political representation; national liberation & unification
 1848-49: throughout Europe: France, German and Italian
states, the Habsburg Empire, Romanian Principalities
 Liberal-constitutional, social(ist), national agendas
 Paris Commune of 1871: short-lived communist regime
 Transnational and interstate connections => conservative
and government fears (“revolutionary directory”)

7. 2. Wars and Restoration: Balance
of Power
 Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1792-1815): total
warfare; popular mobilization; nation(s) in arms; regular
warfare & guerilla fighting: France and allies vs Great
Britain, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Ottoman Empire
 Congress of Vienna (1814-15): new European order
(Restoration) => prevention of: 1) large scale wars; 2)
revolutions “from below” that could destabilize Europe
 Concert of Europe and collective crisis management/
security system between the Great Powers (up to 1914)
 Russo-Ottoman wars; Crimean war; wars of German and
Italian unification => local wars; no threat for the system

8. .
 Principle of legitimacy & monarchical principle –
“Metternich system”? Holy Alliance?
 Congresses to handle jointly diplomatic crises and
revolutions: Aachen, Laibach, Troppau, Verona (1818-22)
 Keeping order: 1) censorship and policing at home; 2)
military interventions abroad (Spain, Italian states, Greece)
 Parliamentarism (highly restricted suffrage) in G. Britain;
Conservative constitutional monarchy in France;
absolutism in Austria, Prussia, Russia, (most) Italian and
German states, Ottoman Empire
 Conservative nation states in Germany and Italy after
1860/1870; maintenance of the balance of power doctrine
under Prussian/German chancellor Otto von Bismarck

9. 3. Industrial Revolution and
Economic Transformation
 “Dual revolutions”: French & Industrial revolutions
 1st wave of industrialization in Great Britain (ca.1770-
1850); 2nd wave in continental Europe (ca.1840-1900)
 Technological innovations: spinning machine; weaving
loom; esp. railways, later electric telegraph => new era
in communications
 Preconditions: upper class capital and population surplus
(5 millions [1700] to 9 millions [1800] in Great Britain);
raw materials at home (coal) and from abroad (colonies)
 Fields: 1) dressing industry; 2) mining and metallurgy
 Industrial zones: e.g. Manchester (England); Rhineland

10. .
 Changes in production relations: decline of traditional
artisans and guilds in favor of large scale factory units
 Concentration of labor force in urban centers => rise of
domestic and external migration esp. for cities such as
London, Berlin, Vienna => decline of living standards
 Free trade (economic liberalism); decline of protectionism
(esp. England and German states (Zollverein, 1834)
 Rising banking system; private firms; stock market crises
 Agriculture => still the basis of European economy
 Technological improvements that foster productivity;
zones: e.g. Lancashire; Po valley; northern Germany
 Mid-18th c. England: concentration of community lands
by landowners; masses of landless peasant workers
 Fragile production: nutrition crises (e.g.1816, 1836, 1846)

11. 4. The Social Question & the labor movement
 Extreme hardships and harsh working conditions (up to 12 working
hours/7 days a week); no protection of labour until the late 19th c.
 Proletariat workforce and rising social tensions: Social Question
 Utopian socialism: Robert Owen and his model workers’ colonies;
Saint Simonianism and model agricultural units; Louis Blanc
(communist): omnipotent state regulating all economic activity
 Babeuf (1797): social equality with violent means (proto-anarchism)
 Scientific socialism: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: theory of stages
and control of production means; class struggle leading to revolution;
end of nobility and bourgeois dominance; socialism; classless society
 Chartist movement (England); socialist-communist demands esp. in
1848 and 1871; highly restrictive legislation against labour unions

12. 5. Nationalism and Nation-building
 Late 18th c.-19th c.: nation building and “imagined communities”:
 1) a certain common past and destiny
 2) density of linguistic and cultural ties (social communication)
 3) conception of equality for all members of the national group
 Stages (Miroslav Hroch): A) activists lay the foundations of
national identity; B) activists strove to increase the national
community; C) the population majority forms a social movement
 Nation states and multinational, dynastic empires =>
nationalism aiming to identify national community and state =>
creation of nation states (Italian and German unification) or
dissolution of multinational empires (Habsburg, Ottoman)

13.  A) German unification: competition for mastery in Germany
between Prussia and Austria; Seven Years War (1756-63); wars of
1866 (Prussia-Austria) and 1870-71 (Prussia-France) leading to the
creation of a (conservative) German Empire (1871-1918)
 B) Italian unification: Piedmont: the “Prussia of Italy”: Cavour: the
Piemontese prime minister behind unification; wars against Austria,
which occupied the North of Italy, in 1848, 1859, 1866; occupation of
Rome (protected by French troops) in 1871; Kingdom of Italy
 C) The Ottoman Empire and the Christian Balkan states:
Serbian revolt (1804-15) leading to an autonomous Serbian
principality; Greek revolution (1821-30) => independent Greek
kingdom; Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania => autonomous
and/or independent from the Ottoman Empire after 1878

14. 6. Individual state developments
 A) Great Britain (Regency Age; Victorian Age):
 Global political position (British Empire in India, South Africa,
Canada, Caribbean) – imperial competition with Russia (esp. in Asia)
 Two-party system of notables: Tories (conservatives); Whigs (liberals)
 Restrictive suffrage but flexible political system: electoral reforms and
expansion of suffrage in 1832 and 1867
 B) France (Restoration; July regime; 2nd Republic; 2nd Empire)
 Bourbon restoration (1815-30): hyper-conservative (ultras) => limited
suffrage still under the July Monarchy => 1848 revolution and bloody
June days => restoration of “order” with Napoleon III and 2nd Empire

15. .
 C) The Habsburg Empire (late Enlightenment; Vormärz;
Neoabsolutism)
 End of Enlightened Absolutist policies (ca.1794) => conservative
absolutism until 1848 => 1848 revolution => Neoabsolutism; wars
against Prussia and Piedmont => Ausgleich with Hungary in 1867
 D) Russia
 Leading Great Power after 1815 – expansion in Europe and Asia
 Tsarist autocracy: firmly conservative & predominantly agrarian
(suppressed Polish rebellions; supported the Habsburg Empire)
 Aggression against the Ottoman Empire (Eastern Question; 1828-
29 war; Crimean war, 1853-56)
 E) The Ottoman Empire
 Weak central authority; revolutions; Tanzimat reforms (1839-76)
to modernize the empire and prevent further decomposition

16. Theories of Revolutions and State
Formation: A) State Formation
 A) Marxist theory:
 The state is an instrument of class interests: of the ruling classes
(bourgeois allied with the nobility) to suppress the working class
 B) Weberian theory:
 “A modern state is a system of administration and law which is
modified by state and law and which guides the collective actions
of the executive staff; the executive is regulated by statute
likewise, and claims authority over members of the association ...”
 Elements of State according to Weber (Economy and Society):
 1) Territoriality; 2) Violence; 3) Legitimacy

17.  Michael Mann on state formation (The Sources of Social Power, vol.II):
 1. The state is a differentiated set of institutions and personnel
 2. It embodies centrality (authority flows from a center to the periphery)
 3. Territoriality over an area, over which it exercises:
 4. Some degree of authoritative, binding rule making, backed up by some
organized physical force
 Particularities shared by all states:
 1) It contains two dualities: It is place and persons and center and territory
 2) State institutions are differentiated, undertaking different functions for
different interest groups within its territories. The state has no final unity
 3) Geopolitics: There is a further set of “political relations” between a
certain state and other states

18. .
 Despotic state power: refers to the distributive power and range of action
of state elites over civil society without routine negotiation
 Infrastructural power: is the institutional capacity of a central state to
penetrate its territories and logistically implement decisions. This is colle-
ctive power, "power through" society, coordinating social life via state
infrastructures. It also enables civil society parties to control the state.
 Bureaucracy may seem centralized but it is fragmented; it is never a
whole but is thoroughly polymorphous.
 Administrations are not wholly separated from governments: 19th c.
absolutist governments fought the unity of administrations and
parliamentary regimes staffed its highest ranks with political loyalists.
 The “Autonomous Power of State”: the state apparatus strives to become
autonomous and pursuit its own interests against other royal or class elites

19. . Differences between Marx’s and Weber’s/Mann’s conceptions of state:
 1) All accept that modern states are capitalist BUT W./M. reject that
class crystallization ultimately determines politics although they accept
that politics are often influenced by class struggles (Yet, capitalism
offered an “enormous impetus” to the rationalization of administration
 2) W./M. have analyzed deeper than M. that polymorphy and internal
fragmentation and a lack of systematization accompanies the state
 3) For Marx, the state is an organ for exploitation; for Weber is only a
(rational) political organization to ensure maintenance of law and order
 4) Marx claimed that the proletariats will take control of the state at the
stage of socialism; Weber (and Mann) do not touch this aspect of state

20. Theories of Revolutions and State Formation:
B) Revolutions
 (Social) Revolutions influence drastically class relations and state
formation: class upheaval meets structural social change, and
political transformation meets social transformation (Theda Skocpol)
 Transnational contexts: 1) structures of world capitalist economy;
2) international states system
 Revolutions begin with economic and political crises, and end up
with the creation of new state institutions, which compete with and
entail the new socio-economic changes (e.g. French Revolution)
 These institutions favor the interests of the victorious groups after
the revolutions

21. . Skocpol acknowledges the importance of state autonomy beyond class
interests (in certain cases class and state interests may be divided)
 Greater popular incorporation in the new post-revolutionary regime
(e.g. revolutionary & Napoleonic eras; -to an extend- 1848 revolutions
 The relation between revolutions and state formation is affected by:
 1) Political leaderships (educated marginal elites inside the state),
who used the state to foster development and battle isolation
 2) Political ideologies that forged cohesion (e.g. Jacobinism,
liberalism, (and later) Marxism(-Leninism) and legitimized the
building and execution of state power
 3) Structural conditions and rapidly changing currents of
revolutions, which modified the plans of ideologically motivated
leaderships

22. Outline of Main Concepts
 1) Administration (Verwaltung):
 Public administration as an everyday form of rule is a formal
organization that is staffed with trained professional personnel and
paid with financial resources provided by the citizens on the basis of
laws. It must be marked by effectiveness and accountability. It requi-
res responsible leadership from the senior administrative personnel.
 2) Authority (Herrschaft):
 The public administration makes use of authority based on Law in
the name of the people, the monarch, God, etc. Although authority
thus depends on power and law, the relation between these spheres
remains problematic (as it is seen in charismatic leadership).

23. .  3) Security, safety (Sicherheit):
 It can be distinguished into domestic and external one, and concerns
the protection of the (political) regime and order from internal threats,
or external ones to the extend the latter ones are deemed in position
the threaten domestic stability. 19th c. regimes sought to forge and
maintain state security policies against e.g. radical, communist or
anarchist groups. Security from external foes usually entailed some
form of international cooperation with foreign state apparatuses too.
 4) Police (Polizei):
 It holds a central place in the bureaucratic state apparatus and forms
the main executive branch for the protection of the political and social
order. As such, it is closely linked not only with justice but also with
government. Not only formal police services but also other state
institutions may at times perform police duties at home or abroad.