Nationalist Militarism Analysis

Nationalist militarism and the expansion of revolutionary ideology, the French Revolution and beyond
Introduction

This paper aims to explore the critical period between around 1780 and 1820, a period of great political, economic and military incertitude in Europe. In order to understand the events that took place in this specific timeframe, it is important to place them in a cultural background. Also called “Le siècle des Lumières”, the XVIII century marks great development in the field of political and philosophical thought. The emergence of new ideas has placed the citizen in the center of the state, giving him a lot of power when regarding politics or the political field. As such, papers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Social Contract or

The constantly changing mentality was enabled by new political and philosophical thought emerging in the late 17th and early 18th century, with a lot of writings used as a weapon against the church which was associated with injustice and abuses. The main ideas employed, as stated by R.R Palmer in the “The world revolution of the West” study, were: “a demand for self-determination, a sense of autonomy of the personality, a refusal to accept norms laid down outside the self, leading sometimes to profound subjectivity, or an instance on self-expression rather than adjustment to preexisting authoritative standards” . These new ideas gave people hope and expectations regarding changing the system to one that serves the interests of a majority, leading them to attempt to change the monarchic system. Moreover, during this time, people’s individualism grew stronger resulting in a demand of self-regulation because of the fact that the values promoted by the church back then did not suffice anymore the needs, demands and values of the population. This was an immediate consequence of the industrial revolution which created new social classes and categories and enlarged the spectrum of interest that an average citizen could develop in respect to the simultaneous cultural branching triggered by the enlighten phenomenon that

Those movements have been enabled and further fueled by the philosophical and intellectual field together with the liberalization of the press that has conducted the revolution on an ideological