Zorro's times: Napoleon Bonaparte and militant liberalism

The historical time period of Zorro in the days when Los Angeles was part of the Spanish colony of Nueva España (Mexico) would most likely fall within the period 1800-1823. I've put together several posts on the historical background of that time. This is the first one.

One of the key concepts for the politics of this period is liberalism, which is hard to relate to our current concepts of "liberal" in the United States. There is more of an historical resemblance to the present-day liberalism in the European sense, as advocated by the parties of the Liberal International. (A bit of advice: don't give yourself a headache trying to translate the LI's brand of liberalism to the American political meaning; their Web site lists Ayn Rand and Thomas Sowell as "liberal" thinkers. Yikes!)

But rather than try to summarize two centuries of the concept's evolution, here I'll just briefly describe the version of Zorro's time.

The liberalism of the 18th century was very much identified with the class interests of the rising capitalist class all over Europe, and also with the ideas of the Enlightenment. Liberals sought to abolish or (more often) limit the power of monarchies in favor of elected assemblies. They wanted to establish greater limits on the political power of the Church, especially the Catholic Church but also the Protestant. Free trade and the sanctity of contracts were important goals for the liberals.

So were personal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, religion and conscience, a press free of government censorship, and security of the person against arbitrary arrest: rights like those in the American Constitution and Bill of Rights. These rights were also central to their political goals. Limiting the privileges of the landed aristocracy was a part of the liberal project.

Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith would be exemplary liberals of that period.

The French Revolution of 1789 was, on the whole, a liberal revolution against the French monarchy and aristocracy, and was initially led by liberals. The French Revolution underwent a radicalization that took it beyond classical liberal goals and methods.

Eventually, the French Republic established by the Revolution became an empire led by Napoleon Bonaparte. Here is where the interactions of the French Revolution with other European powers including Spain gets complex and contradictory.

Napoleon as Emperor certainly wasn't going to stand for election, much less allow himself to be voted out of office. During the Napoleonic Wars, France occupied other European territories like the German Rhineland and Bavaria. Napoleon's occupation imposed many classical liberals institutions and practices on them, such as more democratic local elections, or restrictions on the great power of the feudal Junkers (aristocratic large landholders) in Prussia (then one of the German kingdoms).

From the standpoint of the development of democracy, these produced contradictory results. In the Germans lands, it was Napoleon's introduction of "French" ideas and practices, along with the end of the Holy Roman Empire framework and restrictions on the aristocratic powers like the Junkers, that began concrete political developments toward democracy there. It's no accident that the German Rhineland areas most influenced by France became a leading hotbed of the democratic Revolution of 1848.

At the same time, resistance to French occupation was also an important source of democratic sentiment and also greatly increased national consciousness in Europe. It may not be quite so easy to picture today, but at that time nationalism and democracy were closely related concepts. (And, no, not just in the United States.)

In the German lands including Prussia, the opposition to French occupation was organized by German officials raising regular armies and the struggle is remembered as the Wars of Liberation.

However, the legendary Prussian army of "Old Fritz", aka, Frederick the Great, had been a professional army, a "standing army" of the kind that the American Founders considered an inherent threat to democratic institutions. The armies raised for the Wars of Liberation were popular armies drawn from a much wider cross-section of ordinary people who volunteered to fight against French occupation.

This didn't mean that Prussian Junkers were ready to accept farmers and factory workers as equal citizens. But the experience of participating in a "people's army" (by early 19th century standards) was a major step toward a democratic consciousness. And in Germany as in other countries, the democratic movement was heavily identified with the "national movements".

A similar movement occurred in Spain when Napoleon occupied the country and set up his older brother as Jose I, King of Spain. But that's a story for another post in the series.

Tags: españa, jose i, king joseph of spain, liberalism, king joseph of spain, zorro, zorro's times