The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalism 685
The Crystal Palace, symbol of the new industrial age.
nation. In the parliamentary constitutional monarchy, reform in 1867
expanded the number of those males eligible to vote.
Besides Britain, the other dominant powers during the age of liberalism
were France, which was more slowly entering the industrial age, and Russia,
which despite some significant reforms remained an autocracy antithetical
to liberalism. France during the period 1852-1870 was a highly centralized
empire, with Emperor Napoleon 111 determined to bring economic progress
through the strong involvement of the state. Napoleon HI implemented
universal male suffrage in the first year of his reign. Following a disastrous
war against Prussia (1870-1871), the empire fell, replaced by the Third
Republic, another liberal regime in which executive authority was left weak,
in this case out of fear that yet another Napoleon might emerge.
In contrast, Russia remained an autocracy, a state in which the absolute
authority of the tsar was limited only by bureaucratic inefficiency and the
impossibility of reaching into every corner of the vast empire. Russian
nobles dominated the peasant masses, and unlike Britain and France, Rus
sia had no representative political system and only a tiny middle class,
despite economic growth. Tsar Alexander II shocked many of his own nobles
by emancipating the serfs in 1861. But unlike the political reforms enacted
in Britain and France, the tsar’s reforms did not significantly alter the auto
cratic nature of the Russian Empire. Yet Russia, too, was transformed by
new ideas and increasingly courageous opponents of autocratic authority.
And, like France, imperial Russia also had to worry about the consequences
of a unified Germany.
