After
Napoleon's defeat attempts to reestablish the old European order failed. The
ideals of democracy and the growing impact of the Industrial Revolution were
changing the nature of society. Subject nations wanted independence, and popular
uprisings occurred throughout Europe in the first half of the century. Britain
and France made war on Russia to support the declining Ottoman empire. Italy
achieved unity in 1870, as did Germany in 187 1, after conflicts with Austria
and France. The United States grew from a cluster of 13 rural settlements into
one of the largest nations on earth, its future decided in a bloody civil war.
A wave of Romanticism swept through Europe,
gripping the imagination of a whole generation. The power of nature and of human
emotion found powerful expression in the novels of Sir Walter Scott and the
poetry of Wordsworth and Victor Hugo. An enthusiasm for the Middle Ages inspired
London's Gothic-style Houses of Parliament, while the beauty of nature
influenced the paintings of Constable and Turner.
Western civilization was propelled into industrial urbanization by steam power. Railways
gave a new mobility and, together with the telegraph, revolutionized
communications. Spectacular advances were achieved ir science, particularly in
medicine and biology, with the invention of anaesthetics and the works of Mendel
and Darwin.
In music the Romantic standard-bearer was Beethoven, who expanded traditional musical forms to convey great depth and intensity of feeling. Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt were inspired by the grandeur of nature, but it was also the age of the virtuoso and the public flocked to hear Chopin and Paganini. The growing nationalism was reflected in the operas of Wagner and Verdi and in the work of Russian composers.
