REACTION AND REVOLUTION: THE DECLINE OF THE OLD ORDER

While the Industrial Revolution shook the economic and social foundations of European society, similar revolutionary developments were reshaping the political map of the Continent. These developments were the product of a variety of factors, including not only the Industrial Revolution itself but also the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. The influence of these new forces resulted in a redefinition of political conditions in Europe. The conservative order—based on the principle of hereditary monarchy and the existence of great multinational states such as Austria-Hungary, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire—had emerged intact from the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, but by mid-century, it had come under attack along a wide front. Arraigned against the conservative forces were a set of new political ideas that began to come into their own in the first half of the nineteenth century and continue to affect the entire world today.