ABSTRACT
The revolutions of 1830 were all protests against particularaspects of the peace settlement of 1814-15. The new order which the monarchs and statesmen of the great powers had imposed upon the states of Europe was condemned by liberals and nationalists as an old order, incapable of satisfying the aspirations of the peoples of Europe. This conflict of ideas which the revolutions of 1830 brought sharply into focus was, in the long run, more important than the revolutions themselves. By the end of 1832 the great powers had managed to contain the revolutions, but within forty years the idea of nationalism had totally destroyed the Vienna settlement. The peacemakers had worked on the assumption that states existed on the basis of dynastic rights and binding treaties. This was what they called the public law of Europe. From the 1830s onward a new class of politicians began to argue that states owed their existence to the will of people, and that the existing treaty structure enslaved the peoples of Europe. This was a profound conflict which admitted of no compromise and which could not be brushed aside. Liberal nationalists were confident that in the long run they would win the struggle of opinion. In fact, however, the problem was solved in a way that they had not anticipated: in the 1850s and 1860s some of the conservative monarchies ceased to cling to the treaty structure of Europe, separated liberalism from nationalism and appealed to the people over the heads of middle-class liberal politicians to legitimize their actions. In the 1830s, however, the conservative powers strove to maintain the existing order within their states and in international relations.
