Revolution and the Meanings of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century

Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the French Revolution, "freedom” came to have a host of meanings. This volume examines these contested visions of freedom both inside and outside of revolutionary situations in the nineteenth century, as each author explores and interprets the development of nineteenth-century political culture in a particular national context. The common focus is the struggle in various countries to define, advance, or delimit freedom after the French Revolution. The introductory chapter evokes the problematic relationships between reform and revolution and introduces themes that appear in subsequent chapters, though each chapter is a free-standing interpretive essay. Among the issues addressed are the growth of the public sphere and associational movements; battles over constitutionalism, parliamentary institutions, and the franchise; the role of the state in inhibiting or expanding citizenship and the rule of law; the resort to violence by parties of order or parties of change; and the intrusion of new social questions or ethnic conflicts into the political arena.