Account for the Growth of Liberal Government in Europe During the Period 1815-1914

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Account for the growth of liberal government in Europe during the period 1815-1914 At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, a war was on-going between liberals and those in aristocratic/monarchical rule. Liberalist movements at their heart contained 3 main elements; the belief in a constitutional and parliamentary government, a desire for the protection of private property in a free market, and the want for the separation of religious authority from political authority (Gould, 1998). Yet at that time, Europe was the complete opposite of the way liberals felt that it should be, with monarchs, aristocrats and clergy men predominantly in power, the poorer and middle class had barely little access to their rights, freedoms and few or no privileges. The French Revolution of 1789 began to change all of that, followed closely by the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848. All three Revolutions played significant part in what came to be a significantly liberalist Europe, including Industrialisation. This essay will explain just in what way the Revolutions and Industrialisation led to the overall rise of liberal government in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The French Revolution marks the beginning of the liberal movement taking shape in Europe. Not only was the monarchy in crisis (on the verge of bankruptcy after extreme spending and France’s Involvement in the American Revolution), but the people of France were also victim of poor harvest, the worst of which were in 1775 but were still significantly bad in both 1787 and 1788 (Merriman, 2004). On top of there being a scarcity of resources, the people of France were subject to also having to pay high costs for grain, a staple food in France. All of this was enough to start the fire that would come to known as the French Revolution. Though the nobility were technically the first to revolt with the

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