646 Part 5 • The Age of Mass Politics
Japan led to the Russian Revolution of 1905. This forced short
lived political reforms and encouraged reformers and revolu
tionaries alike.
For more than half a century, liberals had championed the
interests of the middle class, basing the right to vote on the own
ership of property. They did so in the context of constitutional
government, pushing for the rights of legislative assemblies. In
the three decades following the largely unsuccessful 1848 revolu
tions, liberalism prevailed in Great Britain, France, Austria, Italy,
Greece, and Sweden. The British Parliament, which in 1867 had
greatly extended the right of men to vote, approved the secret bal
lot in 1872, and in 1884 enfranchised almost all remaining adult
males. France became a republic early in the 1870s, and universal
male suffrage subsequently was adopted in Germany, Belgium,
Spain, Austria, and Italy. Without the liberals' determination to
expand the franchise, universal male suffrage in much of Western
Europe, followed by political democracy in many states, would
not have occurred. Liberal democracy emerged as the dominant
form of European politics from the second half of the nineteenth
century to the present day.
However, in the last decades of the century, liberalism was on
the defensive, attacked from left and right. Nationalism increas
ingly became part of the expanding contours of political life
within states and between them. During the French Revolution
and Napoleonic era, nationalism had been an ideology identified
with the political left. Liberals had believed that laissez-faire eco
nomic policy and parliamentary government combined with an
expansion of the right to vote (but not necessarily universal male
suffrage) would provide a firm base for the establishment of
nation-states. During at least the first half of the nineteenth cen
tury, liberalism and nationalism were closely entwined; liberals
and nationalists were often the same people, as in Britain,
France, and Italy.
By the end of the century, many nationalists, convinced that
their people were superior to any other, trumpeted the primacy of
the nation over claims of popular sovereignty or belief in human
equality. Nationalism became an ideology championed, above all,
by right-wing parties. Cheap newspapers glorified the nation for
eager readers. “Jingoism” came to define the swaggering self
assurance of nationalists committed to expanding the power of
their nation. At the same time, waves of strikes and demonstra
tions frightened conservatives from Norway and Sweden to Aus
tria and Spain. The fear of socialism, espousing internationalism,
pushed social elites and some in the middle class to the national
ist right. Anti-Semitism fed on aggressive nationalism.