Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage

by Kahan, Alan

• ISBN13: 9781403911742
• ISBN10: 1403911746
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-10-24
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

"Votes should be weighed, not counted", nineteenth-century liberals argued. This groundbreaking study analyzes parliamentary suffrage debates in England, France and Germany, showing that liberals throughout Europe used a distinctive political language, 'the discourse of capacity', to limit political participation. This language defined liberals, and they used it to define and limit full citizenship. The rise of consumer culture at the end of the century drove the discourse of capacity from politics, but it survives today in education and the professions.

Author Biography

Alan Kahan is in the Department of History, Florida International University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Defining Liberalism	1	(20)
The party of contradictions	1	(4)
The discourse of capacity	5	(3)
The suffrage question	8	(3)
The varieties of liberal discourse	11	(2)
Liberal language and European culture	13	(2)
The pre-history of liberalism	15	(6)
Part I: The Discourse of Capacity
1 Liberalism and Suffrage, 1830-47	21	(45)
The English Case: the Great Reform Act of 1832	21	(14)
Founding the July Monarchy in France: the suffrage debates of 1831	35	(10)
Attempts to reform the suffrage in France: 1842 and 1847	45	(5)
Liberalism and the suffrage in Germany, 1830-47	50	(16)
2 Liberalism and Suffrage, 1848-65	66	(43)
Liberalism and revolution, 1848-50: Germany and Prussia	67	(11)
Liberalism and counter-revolution: the French suffrage law of 1850	78	(5)
Liberalism in the absence of revolution: England, 1848-65	83	(10)
Prussian liberalism and the three-class suffrage, 1850-65	93	(9)
French liberalism in retreat, 1851-65	102	(7)
3 Liberalism and Suffrage, 1866-85	109	(44)
The marginalization of French liberalism, 1866-85	110	(12)
English liberalism and suffrage reform, 1866-85	122	(19)
German liberalism and the suffrage question, 1866-85	141	(12)
Part II: Language and Culture
4 The Discourse of Capacity in Context	153	(19)
Contexts: hierarchy	154	(7)
Contexts: social mobility and its limits	161	(4)
Contexts: defining the middle class	165	(7)
5 The Decline of Liberalism	172	(21)
The usual suspects: traditional explanations for the decline of liberalism	172	(7)
The watershed of 1885	179	(2)
The new middle class	181	(3)
Consumer culture and the transformation of hierarchy	184	(5)
Liberalism and democratic society	189	(4)
Concluding Note: the Afterlife of a Political Discourse	193	(9)
Notes	202	(26)
Works Cited	228	(6)
Index	234