Reconstruction Among the Small Nations of Middle Europe

THE French Revolution gave birth to two political principles- ~ the principle of nationality and the principle of democracy.As long as the French revolutionary armies remained true to those two political principles, wherever they went throughout Europe they were received with acclaim and enthusiasm, but when they repudiated those two political principles they were rejected by the peoples of Europe.They did repudiate them when the Revolution fell under the control of Napoleon Bona- parte, and from a democratic revolution it was transformed into an autocratic imperialism.Bonaparte was destroyed because the peoples of Europe insisted upon the validity of the very principle to which the French Revolution had given birth, namely, the principle of nationality.It was the aroused national spirit of Spain, Germany, Russia and England that overthrew the greatest military autocrat of his day.THE CONGRESS OF VIENNAWhen the Congress of Vienna was held in 1815, one would have supposed that the statesmen and the kings, who had assembled there and who had called upon their peoples to rise against the foreign usurper, would have remembered the strength of the revolutionary principle and would have made their territorial readjustments conform to it.Unfortunately they did not.At that Congress two political principles fought for supremacy-the dynastic and the nationalistic-and the dynastic won out in every conflict.The territorial readjustments made then were made without any consideration of the principle of nationality.Peoples that were opposed to each other were united in one state, and peoples that formed one nation were divided among several states.The Dutch, who were Teutonic in origin, Protestant in religion and commercial in their economy, were compelled to form a single state with the Belgians who were Romance in race, Catho

Geography · Political science · European Political History Analysis · History

• The apostle of internationalism

  Open Access•C Brooks•Political Geography•2015

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