Principle of nationality.
Henceforth, though the treaties survived, and with them the principle of
the concert on which they were based, "Europe" as a diplomatic
conception tends to sink into the background and to be replaced by the
old international anarchy of the 18th century. To Canning this
development seemed wholly welcome. He applied to the rivalry of states
the Liberal principle of free competition as the sole condition of
healthy growth. "Villele is a minister of thirty years ago," he wrote to
Bagot on the 3rd of January 1823, "no revolutionary scoundrel: but
constitutionally hating England, as Choiseul and Vergennes used to hate
us, and so things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every
nation for itself, and God for us all." But the essential difference
between the rivalries of the 18th and 19th centuries was in the
conception of the "nation." To Canning, as to the diplomatists of the
congress of Vienna, "nation" was synonymous with "state," and national
boundaries were those defined by the treaties, which Canning was as bent
on preserving as any of his reactionary contemporaries. The conception
of the divine right of every nationality to readjust political frontiers
to suit its own ideals was as foreign to him as to Metternich. Yet this
principle of nationality, which was destined during the 19th century to
wreck the political structure consecrated at Vienna, and to leave to the
succeeding age a host of unsolved and insoluble problems, found in
Canning its earliest champion in the higher councils of Europe. The
recognition of the independence of the South American republics and of
the belligerent rights of the Greek insurgents were both in the first
instance motived by the particular interests of Great Britain; but they
were none the less hailed as concessions to the principles of
nationality, to which they gave an impetus which was destined to
continue till the face of Europe had been transformed.
Europe and the revolt of Greece.
Economic progress; rise of the middle classes.
Revolutions of 1830.
This in fact constitutes the main significance for Europe of the War of
Greek Independence, which lasted from the first rising of the Greeks in
the Morea in 1821 till the signature of the treaty of London on the 7th
of May 1832 (see GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF; TURKEY: _History_). Its
actual outcome, so far as the political structure of Europe was
concerned, was but to add an insignificant kingdom to the European
states system. But its moral effect was immense. The sacrosanctity of
the _status quo_ had been violated, and violated with the active aid of
three of the powers of the continental alliance: Russia, France and
Great Britain. Metternich was right when he said that, in principle,
there was no difference between the Greek insurgents and any other
"rebels against legitimate authority," and the Liberals of all Europe,
forced into inactivity by the Austrian police system, hailed in the
Greeks the champions of their own cause. Philhellenism, beyond its
proper enthusiasm, served as a convenient veil for agitations that had
little concern with Greece. Other forces making for political change
were simultaneously at work. The peace secured by the concert of the
powers had given free play to the mechanical and industrial innovations
that heralded the marvellous economic revolution of the coming age;
wealth increased rapidly, and with it the influence and the ambition of
the middle classes. The revolution of July 1830, which established the
_bourgeois_ monarchy in France, marked their first triumph. In
countries less economically advanced, e.g. Germany and Italy, the
attempt to follow French example ended in failure; but the revolt of the
Belgians, for reasons partly economic and partly national, against the
domination of the Dutch, resulted in the establishment of the
independent kingdom of Belgium--the first actual breach in the
territorial settlement of 1815. In Great Britain the agitation of the
disfranchised middle classes, which seemed to threaten a violent
revolution, ended in 1832 in the passing of the Reform Bill and their
admission to political power. (See FRANCE; GERMANY; ITALY; BELGIUM;
ENGLISH HISTORY.)
The easy success of the revolutions in the west of Europe had been due,
not to any reluctance of the reactionary powers to interfere on the
basis of the old agreements, but to their preoccupation with the
national revolt in Poland (q.v.). In view of this, and of the attitude
of Great Britain, they had to recognize the title of Louis Philippe as
king of the French, merely stipulating that he should guarantee to
maintain the treaties. In spite of the overthrow of the legitimate
dynasty in France, and of the partition of the kingdom of the
Netherlands, the territorial settlement of Vienna remained, after the
revolution of 1830, substantially intact. Outside the limits of the
treaties, however, fateful changes were in progress. These were
determined, broadly speaking, by the two main questions that dominated
international politics between the years 1831 and 1841: (1) the
antagonism between the western constitutional powers, France and Great
Britain, and the eastern autocratic powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia;
and (2) the crisis in the Eastern question resulting from the revolt of
Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, against the Porte.