14 - Reforms, movements for reform, and possibilities of reform: comparing Britain and continental Europe

Summary

A comparison of the ‘age of reform’ in the British Isles with developments in continental Europe might start simply by considering what there is to compare. In the years 1780–1850, there were three broad periods of reform in different parts of the continent. First was the decade of the 1780s, the concluding phase of the reforms of Enlightened Absolutism. Following that were the reforms occurring in Napoleonic Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Some were undertaken under French hegemony, as was the case among Napoleon's allies and satellites in Germany and Italy, while others were carried out in opposition to French hegemony, as in Prussia, insurgent Spain, or – more cautiously and ultimately abortively – in Russia. This reform period extended, more weakly and feebly, in the years following Napoleon's downfall until the full victory of the forces of the Restoration at the beginning of the 1820s. Finally, we can point to a period of incipient and also ultimately abortive reform in the 1840s, preceding the revolution of 1848.

Mentioning the 1848 revolution brings up the major problem of a comparison between Great Britain and the states of the European continent in this period: the question of legal and constitutional continuity. It is not just that it was frequently possible to change and ameliorate social, economic, or political conditions in the British Isles without any such break in legal continuity.