I suspect it's the regicide. Up until then, it can be dismissed after the fact as a reformist movement, somewhat abrupt and a bit extreme but still fitting within the framework of French government and society. Once Mme Guillotine has an intimate conversation with Citizen Capet, all bets are off.
Ideologies without the French Revolution
- Thread starter Beatriz
- Start date
I suspect the swing wouldn't be quite so extreme as that, although the Tories would no doubt be more deferential to the monarch's wishes than the Whigs. Maybe having the Tories in power would be kind of like when, in OTL's US,* the Presidency and the Congress are both controlled by the same party, and having the Whigs in power would be like when they're controlled by different parties.
* Incidentally, the US President's powers are in many ways like those of a standard 18th-century monarch. One of my friends half-jokingly calls the US "the last holdout of the ancien regime" for this reason.
Depending on how political philosophy develops, you might see theorists arguing that tyranny or gross mismanagement are legitimate grounds for overthrowing a monarch and installing someone else in his stead (as oppose to the normal medieval solution, which was to try and force him to accept a regency council and hope that his son is less rubbish).
unprincipled peter
Donor
An add on to this/sort of answering myself. (caveat: obviously I know little beyond a generic sense of the ideological shift, and have done a little wiki surfing - a dangerous combo for a typist with spare time!)
I see the Napoleon Code was promulgated in 1804. From Wiki: "The Code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major step in replacing the previous patchwork of feudal laws. Historian Robert Holtman regards it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world.[2]" Seems to me, Napoleon instituted a number of reforms from his days as First Consul, and much of the codes/ideologies/sense of nationalism really spread across the continent with his conquests. Naturally, Napoleon didn't do all this by himself, but his leadership/control of the country is what enabled things to proceed as they did. Simply removing Napoleon doesn't remove the ideology, but if France becomes chaotic, the ability to implement reforms becomes limited. And if France isn't sweeping across the continent in repeated wars, you're not going to have as much contact.
I would think that France losing the War of 2nd Coalition would impact change across the world.
I think King Charles tried that. It uhm didn't work out for him.
This is something I'll have to grapple with, as my TL avoids the French Revolution (and the American Revolution for that matter).
Many parts of the code already existed in various forms though. The novelty wasn't the Napoleonic Code itself, it was making a unified code that applied to all regions equally. And even that wasn't a new concept. Napoleon just didn't have to worry about a region having the legal president to veto his code.
The Tories died out about four times over the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s. They just kept on getting new factions forming which were accused of being "Tories" by their enemies and eventually adopted the name.
Doing so between 1800 and 1850 means revolution. And unlike in 1648, as well as unlike France in 1848, Britain had the right social/demographic structure in 1850 to make a republican revolution succeed.
France in 1848 IOTL was a heavily rural society with Paris being the single revolutionary hotbed. Britain, however, was not.
It's an interesting question (though completely off the thread's main topic): when was the last time that the British king could have yanked power back from Parliament?
Certainly by Victoria it was too late. George III before the Regency Act, maybe?
While 1832 is the watershed, I think there's a case for this being possible up until 1910. So long as the House of Lords retains veto power, there is enough non-democracy built into the British system for an active monarch to have been more than a figurehead (albeit it would require an exceptionally shrewd monarch, excessively passive politicians, and some sort of general crisis to justify it). 1936 was far too late, of course.
VVD0D95
Banned
Prevent George IiI from going mad or have George IV not be an idiot and you’re golden. Or kill Victoria off in 1862
If Parliament passes some extremely controversial bill, the monarch could probably veto it with enough popular support to make the veto stick. That wouldn't get all the power back from Parliament, of course, but even just (re-)setting the precedent that the monarch can veto a bill if he or she wants could potentially lead to a big increase in the monarch's power.
The main difficulty would be finding some issue that would be (a) able to get through Parliament, whilst (b) being unpopular enough with enough people for the monarch to have serious backing for vetoing it. Maybe a 19th-century attempt at disestablishing the Church of England? There were a lot of fears towards the end of the century that such a move was on the cards, but at the same time England's status as a Protestant nation was sufficiently well-established that Queen Victoria could have counted on a lot of support if she were to veto it.
Or I guess you could have some kind of crisis, like a rebellion or invasion, which disrupts the ordinary workings of government so much that Parliament is no longer able to function effectively.
This is what I wanted to "parody" with my joke (even if I don't quite agree with the comparison with King Charles).
It is impossible to see a "flowerpot King" and then a King with prerogatives depending on the government without it getting out of hand.
All it takes is for an ambitious King to want to maintain them or for a government to want to abolish them to put the country in trouble. In the event that neither party succeeds in crushing the other, these royal prerogatives should be framed and not varied at the whim of Parliament.
An executive power cannot be subject to the existence or not of a favorable government.
Beatriz
Gone Fishin'
Communalism/State Consociationalism: The belief that the natural unit of society is the religious/caste/ethnic community, that government serves as the referee between communities, and that modern mass politics and liberalism/individualism are to be opposed, with communities internally policing their members, and members also reporting to a non-territorial distributed “Captains” who have a share of governance in their race/religion/caste like the Kapitan System in the DEI
I could see this evolving out of pillarization in the Low Countries and the Kapitan System in the Dutch East Indies and getting adopted in the Ottoman Empire or India
I could see this evolving out of pillarization in the Low Countries and the Kapitan System in the Dutch East Indies and getting adopted in the Ottoman Empire or India
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I’d argue most of they ideological development occurred before Napoleon took power. Napoleon was able to spread the genesis of most of these ideas to wider Europe. I don’t see the Napoleonic code as having a lasting ideological impact