LIBERAL NATIONALISM History X
LIBERAL NATIONALISM History X
LIBERAL NATIONALISM History X
• Since the French Revolution, liberalism had stood for the end of autocracy and
clerical privileges and representative govt. through parliament.
• Yet there was no universal suffrage. In France the right to vote and to get elected
were granted only to property owning men. Men without property and women
were excluded from political rights.
• Napoleonic code went back to limited suffrage and reduced women to the status
of minor. Throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries women and non propertied
men organised opposition movements demanding equal political rights.
ECONOMIC MEANING OF LIBERALISM
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• In the economic sphere liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the
abolition of state imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.
• During the 19th century this was a strong demand of the emerging middle
classes.
The measure of cloth was elle which in each region stood for a different
length. An elle of textile material bought in Frankfurt would get you 54.7 cm
of cloth, in Mainz 55.1 cm, in Nuremberg 65.5 cm and in Freiburg 53.5 cm.