why were the ideology of liberalism and
nationalism led in developing in cennical and
eastern Europe ?
Answers
Liberalism in continental Europe often lacked the fortuitous combination of broad popular support and a powerful liberal party that it had in Britain. In France the Revolutionary and Napoleonic governments pursued liberal goals in their abolition of feudal privileges and their modernization of the decrepit institutions inherited from the ancien régime. After the Bourbon Restoration in 1815, however, French liberals were faced with the decades-long task of securing constitutional liberties and enlarging popular participation in government under a reestablished monarchy, goals not substantially achieved until the formation of the Third Republic in 1871.
Throughout Europe and in the Western Hemisphere, liberalism inspired nationalistic aspirations to the creation of unified, independent, constitutional states with their own parliaments and the rule of law. The most dramatic exponents of this liberal assault against authoritarian rule were the Founding Fathers of the United States, the statesman and revolutionary Simón Bolívar in South America, the leaders of the Risorgimento in Italy, and the nationalist reformer Lajos Kossuth in Hungary. But the failure of the Revolutions of 1848 highlighted the comparative weakness of liberalism on the Continent. Liberals’ inability to unify the German states in the mid-19th century was attributable in large part to the dominant role of a militarized Prussia and the reactionary influence of Austria. The liberal-inspired unification of Italy was delayed until the 1860s by the armies of Austria and of Napoleon III of France and by the opposition of the Vatican.