19th Century Ideals

As you can see from our groups vine, we used the seven seconds to portray the ideology of Liberalism in simple stop motion. It shows what the average liberal in the 19th century would want their society to be like. They mainly wanted to oust the ways of the absolute monarchy and introduce more constitutional monarchy's, which is represented by the tipping scale that produces a balance of monarchy and constitutional rights.  One way they could do this was to reduce the amount of power that the monarchs were able to hold over their people, thus the shrinking crown. The liberals also believed that tradition was better off replaced with innovation and new ideas. They saw little to no benefit holding on to old methods of doing things if they could be done easier with more modern approaches. This is represented by the tearing up of the word tradition. Finally, they also believed in god-given right and talent so almost anyone could move up in the classes of the time if they had enough talent. Liberals influenced many great pieces of literature, some of which led to creation of entire political systems like Adam Smith and his creation of Capitalism.

The other two ideals had both similar and very different beliefs. Conservatives of the time believed that tradition was a cornerstone of society that could not be overlooked or forgotten. They thought that since traditions were tested by the rigors of time, they could hold up in any social and political era. They also believed that absolutist monarchs and a hierarchical class system were the only ways to have order in society and highly supported both. Conservatives of the time used many examples from the French revolution as to why they thought monarchy was the only safe way to rule. Nationalists of the time believed that a nation was to be treated as a bond, a sort of brotherhood that tied its citizens together through bonds of language, custom and heritage. They were strongly against having foreign rule in nations they called home and fought against them whenever and however they could. Italy and Germany were the major nationalist nations of the time and allowed no foreign government to rule them without resisting first.