HST6398 - Counterrevolutions: Mass Politics and the Modern Right, 1790-1870

We are accustomed to think about the period between the French revolution and the middle of the nineteenth century as one marked by the struggle for democracy, popular sovereignty and national emancipation in Europe and beyond. This module offers a different perspective. It shows that this was also a period of counterrevolutions, civil wars and insurrections in the name of absolutism and in defence of monarchical authority. It demonstrates that these movements were as important as their "progressive" counterparts in understanding the emergence of mass politics in the modern world. In fact, they marked the birth of modern popular right-wing politics. The module does so by looking at the social, cultural and intellectual foundations of counterrevolutionary movements in the IberoAmerican Empires, Portugal, Spain, France and the Italian peninsula between the 1790s and 1870s.