What we need to be able to see change

 

Paine’s contention was that for a country to progress the people must be free and there should be no class or caste system. No one should be above others merely by virtue of his of her birth. In short, it should be a classless society and not a society of nobles and serfs, who would merely be slaves by another name. Only through a meritocracy system where one gets ahead based on one’s ability and not birth can a country achieve its full potential.

THE CORRIDORS OF POWER

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Thomas Paine’s and Edmund Burke’s reactions to the French Revolution 

Edmund Burke was opposed to the ideals of the French Revolution and predicted that it was going to fail and would result in chaos and violence. Considering that he wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790 during the aftermath of the Storming of the Bastille -- when most of Europe was ecstatic about the events in France and when the full impact and implications of the Revolution were not yet known -- makes him quite a visionary.

The ideals of the Revolution were equality and the abolishment of the old order. This also meant the removal of the traditional system of government, meaning the church and the monarchy. Burke’s view, however, was that the failed and corrupted monarchy system was not a crucial factor to warrant its removal because this was the system that had prevailed through the ages.

Burke’s contention was that a devil you know is better than an angel you do not know because it is better to deal with a known evil than to dabble in the unknown and the uncertainties it would bring. In search of a better system of governance meant they had to uproot the very system that had maintained order. And this meant disorder would replace it.

Nevertheless, Burke appears to have contradicted himself by rejecting the notion that monarchs rule by the grace of God and are appointed by God and that the people have no right in deposing their monarch. He also believed that there should be laws to uphold the civil liberties of the people and protect them against oppressive governments.

Thomas Paine, who was outraged by what he considered Burke’s attack on the Revolution, was opposed to the notion of hereditary monarchs and noble privileges. For all intents and purposes, Paine was a republican and heavily influenced by the American Revolution.

Paine argued that the people have a right to choose their own system of government and no one should rule by divine right and no nation ruled by a hereditary monarch. He opined that the French, therefore, have every legal right to depose their king and replace it with a republican system of government.

Paine, in fact, drew on the American model to argue his case and quoted the new American constitution to demonstrate the superiority of a republic over a monarchy. Monarchies are not accountable to the people it governs and there is no transparency in the financial management of the country resulting in a squandering of the country’s wealth. 

Paine’s contention was that for a country to progress the people must be free and there should be no class or caste system. No one should be above others merely by virtue of his of her birth. In short, it should be a classless society and not a society of nobles and serfs, who would merely be slaves by another name. Only through a meritocracy system where one gets ahead based on one’s ability and not birth can a country achieve its full potential.

Two ways Napoleon Bonaparte changed politics in countries outside France in the period 1799–1815

Firstly, the Napoleonic Wars triggered the birth of nationalist movements and sentiments of independence, unification and self-determination. Secondly, it saw the spread of new ideas and reforms to the education system, which triggered dissent and liberalism.

During the Wars, almost the whole of Europe fell under French rule where they introduced a new system of administration. One of the features of this new system was to extend education to everyone and not just to the elite. Students were encouraged to seek and question and no longer just accept things without question. An educated population that can think and question is a recipe for dissent and a catalyst in the push for reforms. Invariably, this would be a breeding ground for liberal ideas.

Nationalist sentiments rose in countries under French rule. The colonised people began to organise themselves to resist the French. Resisting French occupation also meant opposing the government of the day. Once the population had learned how to organise themselves and how to oppose authority, this opened up a Pandora’s box where later this resistance would be channelled against the old order. Even though the French may have been defeated and had been sent home, the people were no freer under the old order than they were under French occupation. Hence the struggle for freedom, independence, unification, civil liberties, equality, free speech, less censorship, republicanism, liberalism, the right to organise themselves, etc., continued long after the French had gone home. This eventually resulted in the demise of the Holy Roman Empire and triggered nationalist movements in Germany and Italy.

The end of the Napoleonic Wars resulted in the 1815 Congress of Vienna. This was probably one of the most important and complicated treaties in history. The first aim of the Congress was to create a balance of power so that emerging powers with expansionist aspirations could be thwarted by a coalition of other powers. The second objective was to protect conservative regimes and to preserve the pre-1789 system of government -- meaning the old order of monarchies in Europe.

The monarchs were attempting to use the Vienna Congress to defend the old order of conservative regimes and this set the stage for the battle between liberalism and conservatism from 1815 onwards. Steps were also taken to suppress liberal and revolutionary ideas that had flourished in France during the Revolution and later spread throughout Europe. One example was Metternich’s draconian Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which countered the 1793 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

In conclusion, Napoleon was instrumental in spreading his new liberal ideas throughout the countries that France had occupied and it was too late to stem the tide. The end result would be that Napoleon ‘triggered’ the Congress of Vienna while the Congress, in turn, ‘triggered’ the revolutions of 1848. The British Empire would emerge the leading world power into the next century while the Spanish Empire would weaken. The 1848 revolutions, therefore, were the result of Napoleon’s pre-1815 conquest of almost the whole of Europe.