Britain's Role In The Collapse Of The Congress System Essay

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Examine Britain’s role in the collapse of the Congress System From the onset, Britain stood apart from the other European powers and opposed the Russian-sponsored scheme to thwart the spread of liberalism in Europe. With the exception of Britain, the architects of the Vienna Settlement were conservative absolute rulers who felt threatened by (French) revolutionary ideas such as nationalism and liberalism. Moreover Russia and Austria were multi-national empires whose very existence was threatened by nationalism such that any concession to that principle would be an act of suicide. The Russians, Austrians and Prussians had conservative rulers still firmly convinced of their ‘divine right to rule’ and they had not fought the French for so long only to concede their right to rule and that of their empires to exist at the congress table. Thus the Russians clung onto the Poles and the Finns among other nationalities while the Austrians did likewise to the Slavs, Serbs, Magyars and Italians in their multi-national empire. The Russian king Alexander even proposed a ‘Holy Alliance’ of Christian monarchs devoted to the suppression of…show more content…
As already discussed above, these powers sought to turn the congress system into a “holy alliance” to protect themselves against liberal ideas. Britain was justified in resisting their scheme because it was a constitutional monarchy in line with some of the liberal principles the other absolutist states wanted to supress. The congress system was bound to collapse someday because it had been created by European states whose political ideologies and interests were not only fundamentally different but also in conflict as well. As such, heaping the blame on Britain alone is to miss the full picture of a congress whose collapse was a collective

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