#27 The French Revolution, Napoleon and the Beginnings of Transformation Across Europe

The French Revolution failed, but it left behind a set of ideas that not only have been debated ever since but more importantly the idea that society itself could be changed by overthrowing the state. Rulers across the world have never forgotten that lesson, and neither have the radicals that have studied the French Revolution for ideas and stimulus. The idea that society can be changed to a more equitable and just order has remained with us all. The debate has come down to whether justice and equality can be obtained by using the existing levers of power, or whether the overthrow of the existing order is necessary. Every socialist must stand in the shoes of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution, like all revolutions that overthrow existing forms of rule and government, threw up new writers that reflect their time and age. Thomas Paine was to the French Revolution what Lenin and Trotsky were 120 years later to the Russian Revolution. Paine's The Age of Reason and The Rights of Man are two books which defy time. To this day, new works continually appear about his thought. He was the son of a Quaker, the radical religion of the time, which provided Paine with the ability to think freely outside the box of ideas accepted in his day. Paine's work will continue to be discussed according to contemporary writers’ conceptions of a just society.

The Napoleonic wars had not fully destroyed the old structures of the societies of Europe for a colonial and capitalist future. The Holy Roman Empire, which had ruled much of central Europe for 1000 years, was finally removed from the scene. The Holy Roman Empire had never clearly laid out geographical boundaries as we have today. But over this period, the Empire had ruled over the entire Germanic-speaking peoples, plus parts of today’s France, Italy and Scandinavia, and at times much more territory. It was multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic. Like all ancient large empires, it had ruled through many lesser monarchies. Political authority was fragmented. Political power was a combination of the Church of Rome with the emperor, whereby religious and secular power was united in a single whole. The central figure was the divinely ordained and sanctioned ruler, the emperor.

The empire had been weakened over the previous two centuries by attacks by the Ottomans on its eastern flank. The Ottomans remained a major force, occupying Greece Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Moldavia in the west, much of North Africa including Egypt and the southern Mediterranean, bordering both the lands of the Persian and the Red sea including modern-day Yemen: thus managing to control the overland traditional routes to Asia and the Silk road.

The Holy Roman Empire had been threatened from within by the Protestant revolution. The Thirty Years War 1616-48 had been primarily a religious war; it had killed 25% of the population and 50% of the young men. Neither this nor the Ottoman invasions had caused the collapse. But the Napoleonic wars had re-organized central Europe into the Confederation of the Rhine. That had been sufficient to finally destroy the Holy Roman Empire.

The Confederation of the Rhine (1806-1813) - shown here at its largest extent in 1812. This work has been released into the public domain by its author, 52 Pickup. This applies worldwide. Via Wikimedia Commons.

The Napoleonic revolution prepared the way towards the reorganization of Europe to fully create capitalist states. Napoleon undertook many of the political reforms that were necessary to transform Europe and especially France. He centralized civil political authority, the Judiciary, the Financial system, he created the Central Bank of France in 1800. He centralized Judicial reform through the code Napoleon, He reformed the Church, in that Church and State became officially separate institutions. Napoleon transformed education, public works and the Colonial French system. He prepared France and much of Europe for a Capitalist system.

The confederation of the Rhine would end up in 1871 as the unification of the German-speaking kingdoms. Meanwhile, the Hapsburg empire - a huge area of central Europe which included Hungary, Austria, Transylvania and Croatia, which had existed within the Holy Roman Empire - remained as an ancient feudal Kingdom, to be finally extinguished by the wars in 1914 to 1918.

 Transformation, Development and Scholarship

As I’ve emphasized in previous blogs, the concept of transformation is key to understanding how societies moved towards industrial capital and just how difficult that process has been in history. Here I want to make a note about societies before the present era. Societies that have been characterised by different scholars as pre-literate, primitive, feudal and so on. When I began my intellectual career in the late 1960s, scholars then were arguing that the concept of ‘primitive’ was a scholarly and objective term. In development studies, that all societies moved through three stages until they reached the ‘heights’ we had achieved. In some archaeology, there has been an assumption that societies have moved from nomadic – so-called iron age societies - to agricultural, to centralised feudal communities: almost a straight line of development. Once again, we Westerners have assumed the superiority of our societies. It is as if we were the victors of a long line of thinking about growth and development. Scholars are not immune to the arrogance of our own superiority.

The actual truth of all older societies is that there has been a huge mix of peoples across the world. There was a multitude of languages, religions, and gods who had been recognised over very long periods. All moved and adapted according to the needs of existence and nature. If we understand our recent ancestors with respect, we see a motley collection of ways in which humans have adapted to their environment: a wonderful array of civilisations, of peoples all of whom 'loved' their ways of living, and all of whom have fiercely resisted many of the adaptions required by industrial capitalism.

The 500 years of history I cover in these blogs, tore apart these ancient civilisations. Empires based on dynastic monarchies that had long history have been destroyed. We, who did the tearing, have persuaded ourselves that we have produced a superior civilisation; we argue that we all live longer, healthier more complete lives. These blogs are intended to question these assumptions. There is no question that we have produced a different world than any that came before, but people have not had the option to retain their old civilisation. Everyone has been forced into our European/American world, whether they wished it or not. This is one important reason the concept of transformation is so important.

In the 19th Century: Transformation and Racial Ideas

Racism was the ideology that accompanied Colonial invasions over these long 500 years. Racism was also the backbone of ideas that accompanied industrialisation. The ideology provided the perfect explanation for the people who dominated globally; at the same time as they created new inventions technologically. The people involved assumed that they were a superior ‘breed’ of people. The French, Dutch, British and latterly the Americans absorbed racist ideas as the ‘natural’ order. The ideas of race and the racism that sprang from these ideas permeated Nations, so whole peoples assumed their innate superiority.

So again, I return to the ideas of racism without apology! The idea that white people were superior to all other peoples, occurred and remains with us to this day. The ideology of racism sustained invasion and subjugation. Us Western Europeans, alongside the North Americans, saw ourselves as the ‘master race’. Of course, this idea has been expressed in slightly different forms throughout history. The Eugenics movement in the late 19th and early 20th century expressed the ideas of a ‘master race’ like no other set of ideas. Eugenics was believed in by all the Europeans invading powers at the time. During the 19th century, racial ideas acquired the veneer of scientific certainty. But it is worth remembering that this idea pre-dates eugenics and extends beyond its apparent end. Hindsight is important, we can now say in the 21st century that racial ideas were false.

To understand the 19th and 20th-century colonial period, it is crucial to accept that all leading people in banking, industry, and politics believed firmly in racial concepts. In the 21st century, racism has been recognised as ideas which denigrate. In the 19th century, racism was a complete set of political ideas which dominated social thought. Racism explained, so it was argued, why white westerners were ‘superior’ to all other peoples. It justified all their actions, whether this was exterminating peoples and groups, or ruling so-called lesser peoples. All leading western and American people believed at the time that races were real and tangible. Huge scientific efforts of observation were made to provide justifications for this such as by measuring peoples head sizes up to 1945.

During the 19th century, a range of scientists attempted to provide both the historical and factorial base to make race a scientific concept. Race and racial ideas were taken on enthusiastically in the USA, German and in Britain. By the end of the 19th century, progressive thought was racist by definition.

Thomas Malthus was writing in the 1820s, and from his observations, it was clear that supporting the poor in distress was detrimental to the welfare of society, as such people would go on to produce more people at the bottom of the pile. It was beneficial, Malthus argued, to allow people in distress in famines to die.

Charles Darwin came up with the concept of the survival of the fittest. He was referring to the animal kingdom in nature, but the concept fitted neatly into a colonial mentality and justified European and American domination of all other people.

Herbert Spencer then managed to put Malthus's and Darwin's ideas together. In the 1860s, he came up with a political scientific framework to make race a thoroughly respectable frame of reference. The Eugenics movement followed, with basic elements in the USA and German in the early 20th century. A programme was put in place to sterilise criminals, the 'feeble-minded' and so-called ‘degenerates’. This was all long before Hitler took up these same ideas.

Equally logical under the accepted racial norms of the time was the justification of killing whole peoples that were considered 'degenerate'. This first occurred in today’s Turkey when the new regime that took over from the Ottomans attempted to Europeanise an Islamic people. The regime led by Attaturk attempted to remove and murder the Armenian people after 1918. It was said that 1.5 million peoples were killed. The western powers knew what was happening and did not object. Hitler also knew what was happening in the new Turkey and kept a close watch. He considered Ataturk the master and followed his principles when he later decided to remove Germany’s alleged ‘degenerates’: Jews, Slavs, homosexuals, communists and the mentally incapacitated in the 1940s.

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