Getting Started
Following the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the leaders of Europe’s great powers gathered to establish a lasting peace and prevent a recurrence of the revolutionary chaos that had engulfed the continent. This period, from 1815 onward, was dominated by a powerful conservative backlash against the ideals of the French Revolution. The central historical challenge was how to restore and maintain order, tradition, and stability in a world that had been permanently altered by new, dynamic forces.
What You Should Be Able to Do
After reviewing this material, you should be able to:
Explain the core principles of 19th-century conservatism as a response to revolutionary change.
Describe the goals and methods of the Concert of Europe in maintaining the post-Napoleonic order.
Analyze how conservative statesmen, like Klemens von Metternich, worked to suppress liberal and nationalist movements.
Explain how the European political order established in 1815 was both maintained and challenged in the subsequent decades.
Key Developments & Analysis
This section uses Causation to explore why the conservative order emerged and what its effects were on European politics.
Causes of the Conservative Order
The political and ideological climate of 1815 was a direct reaction to the preceding quarter-century of turmoil.
The French Revolution & Napoleonic Wars: The violence of the Reign of Terror and the constant warfare under Napoleon created a deep-seated fear of both revolution and a single dominant power among Europe's ruling elites. They sought to create a system that would prevent both from happening again.
The Rise of Conservative Ideology: In response to revolutionary ideals, a new formal ideology of Conservatism developed. This ideology, articulated by thinkers like Edmund Burke, argued that society was a complex, organic entity that evolved slowly through tradition. Conservatives believed that radical, abstract principles like "the rights of man" were dangerous and that established institutions—such as monarchy, the church, and the aristocracy—were essential for maintaining social order. A core tenet was that human nature was not perfectible, and therefore, attempts to create a perfect society through revolution would inevitably lead to chaos and tyranny.
The Goal of a "Balance of Power": The great powers (Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain) wanted to ensure no single state could dominate the continent as Napoleonic France had. This required restoring a stable equilibrium and creating a mechanism for collective action.
Effects & Impacts of the Conservative Order
The conservative agenda was put into practice through a new system of international relations and domestic policy.
Immediate Effects
The Concert of Europe: The major powers established the Concert of Europe (also known as the Congress System), a novel diplomatic arrangement to maintain the European status quo—the existing political and territorial settlement. The great powers agreed to meet periodically to resolve international crises and work together to uphold the 1815 agreements. This represented a new commitment to collective action to preserve peace and political order.
Reestablishment of Traditional Authorities: Across Europe, conservatives worked to restore the power of the old ruling families and institutions. Monarchies were reestablished in France, Spain, and other states where they had been deposed. This effort was a direct rejection of the revolutionary principle of popular sovereignty.
Suppression of Dissent: The architect of this system, Austrian Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich, used the Concert of Europe as a tool to suppress revolutionary movements wherever they appeared. He saw liberalism (an ideology promoting individual rights and constitutional government) and nationalism (the idea that peoples with a common identity should have their own states) as dangerous forces that threatened the stability of multi-ethnic empires like Austria. The Concert authorized military interventions to crush liberal revolts in Italy and Spain in the early 1820s.
Long-Term Impacts
A Century of Relative Peace: The Concert of Europe was largely successful in its primary goal of preventing another continent-wide war among the great powers for nearly a century (from 1815 to 1914).
Persistent Ideological Conflict: While the conservative order was dominant, it could not eliminate the liberal and nationalist ideas it opposed. These forces continued to grow, sparking revolutions in 1830 and, most dramatically, across the continent in 1848. These challenges revealed the fragility of the conservative settlement.
Eventual Breakdown of the System: The consensus among the great powers eventually fractured. Disagreements over issues like Greek independence and, later, the Crimean War demonstrated that national interests could outweigh the commitment to collective conservative action, leading to the eventual collapse of the Concert system.
Data & Organization Tools
Timeline: The Concert of Europe in Action
| Year(s) | Event | Significance |
|---|---|---|
| 1814–1815 | Congress of Vienna | The great powers meet to redraw the map of Europe and establish a new conservative political order based on balance of power and legitimacy. |
| 1815 | Quadruple Alliance | Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain form a military alliance to enforce the Vienna settlement and prevent any future French aggression. |
| 1820 | Congress of Troppau | Metternich persuades Russia and Prussia to accept the principle of intervention, allowing great powers to send armies into other countries to crush revolutions. |
| 1821 | Austrian Intervention in Naples | Following the principle established at Troppau, Austrian troops march into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to suppress a liberal constitutionalist revolt. |
| 1823 | French Intervention in Spain | The Concert of Europe authorizes a French army to cross the Pyrenees and restore the absolute power of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII. |
| 1830 | July Revolution in France | A liberal revolution overthrows the Bourbon monarchy, challenging the principle of legitimacy. Other nationalist revolts erupt in Belgium and Poland. |
| 1848 | Revolutions of 1848 | A wave of liberal and nationalist uprisings sweeps across Europe, temporarily overthrowing the government in France and forcing Metternich to flee Vienna. |
Evidence Bank
Klemens von Metternich: Austria’s foreign minister from 1809 to 1848, who was the leading figure in European politics after 1815. He was the primary architect of the Concert of Europe and dedicated his career to upholding the conservative order against the forces of liberalism and nationalism.
Edmund Burke: An Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher whose Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) became a foundational text of modern conservatism. He argued for the value of tradition and gradual reform over radical, revolutionary change.
Conservatism: A political ideology that emerged in the early 19th century to justify traditional authorities. It valued monarchy, aristocracy, and the established church, and was based on the idea that human nature was flawed and that society needed established institutions to prevent chaos.
Concert of Europe (Congress System): The post-1815 system in which the great powers of Europe (Austria, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and later France) agreed to consult on international matters and cooperate to maintain the balance of power and suppress revolutionary movements.
Status Quo: A Latin term meaning "the existing state of affairs." In the context of 19th-century politics, it refers to the desire of conservatives to maintain the political and social order established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
Liberalism: A political ideology that challenged conservatism by advocating for individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech and religion, and demanding government based on written constitutions and popular consent.
Nationalism: The powerful ideology holding that a person’s primary loyalty should be to a community of people who share a common language, history, and culture. This force threatened to break apart the multi-ethnic empires of Austria, Russia, and the Ottomans.
Congress of Vienna (1815): The international conference of European leaders that concluded the Napoleonic Wars. It aimed to create a lasting peace by restoring monarchical rule and establishing a balance of power on the continent.
Skill Snapshots
Causation:
The chaos of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars caused European leaders to create the Concert of Europe to ensure stability.
The rise of liberal and nationalist ideologies caused conservative leaders like Metternich to implement policies of censorship and military intervention.
The conservative belief in imperfectible human nature caused them to support traditional religious and political authorities as a bulwark against social chaos.
Comparison:
Conservatism sought to preserve the power of traditional monarchies and aristocracies, whereas Liberalism sought to limit their power through written constitutions.
The Concert of Europe aimed to maintain the international status quo through collective security, whereas nationalist movements aimed to shatter that status quo by creating new, independent nation-states.
Edmund Burke developed a philosophical argument for conservatism, while Klemens von Metternich put conservative principles into practice through pragmatic diplomacy and state power.
Continuity and Change Over Time:
Baseline: In 1815, the European political order was reset on the conservative principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and balance of power.
Change: A new diplomatic mechanism, the Concert of Europe, was created to collectively manage European affairs and suppress revolutions.
Change: New ideologies of liberalism and nationalism grew in influence, presenting a sustained challenge to the established conservative order.
Continuity: Despite challenges, monarchy remained the dominant form of government across most of the continent for several decades after 1815.
Common Misconceptions & Clarifications
The Concert of Europe was a formal organization. It was not. It was an informal agreement—a system of consultation and consensus among the great powers with no permanent staff or headquarters.
"Conservative" in 1815 means the same as it does today. Nineteenth-century conservatism was about preserving a specific social order: monarchy, established churches, and a landed aristocracy. It was generally opposed to the principles of free-market capitalism and broad political participation that are often associated with modern conservatism.
The Concert of Europe was completely united. The great powers often disagreed. Great Britain, in particular, frequently objected to the policy of intervening in the internal affairs of other states, creating friction within the system.
The era was one of total peace. While the Concert prevented large-scale wars between the great powers, it did not stop all conflict. It often initiated or authorized smaller military interventions to crush revolutions, and wars of national liberation (like in Greece) still occurred.
One-Paragraph Summary
The period after 1815 was defined by the establishment of a new conservative order designed to prevent a repeat of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Guided by statesmen like Klemens von Metternich and an ideology articulated by thinkers like Edmund Burke, the great powers created the Concert of Europe to maintain the status quo through collective action. This system successfully reestablished traditional authorities and suppressed early liberal and nationalist movements, ensuring a period of relative international peace. However, the very forces of change it sought to control continued to grow in strength, challenging the conservative settlement in a series of revolutionary waves that would ultimately erode and transform the European political order.