Ideologies: Liberalism and all the Rest

What were the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how did they influence social and political action? In class, we took this question and wrote down what we thought were definitions for these ideologies without any technological help. Then we split into 3 sets of 2 group. With these new groups, we made a presentation on a specific Ideology. My group was assigned Liberalism, and our full video can be seen here:

       

         This video gives a quick look into what Liberalism is, and how it played a part in the 19th century.  What liberalism did is focus on what the majority wanted. People wanted to have more of a political influence, which is why liberalists preferred a constitutional monarchy or a meritocracy, compared to an absolute monarch. It’s good to note that no real ‘democracies’ as we know them today were around back then, that was ‘too extreme’ even for the most hardcore liberalists. From a social action standpoint, liberalism empowered the general public because it allowed the majority of the people to have a say in what they believe, and decide for themselves how the government will be represented.

The other two prominent ideologies that were popular and widely pushed for in Eurasia during the 19th century were nationalism and conservatism. Nationalism is when people are united by a common culture, language, belief system and their ruler, but yet are separate countries. They join together to become one force, and usually have enough power to crush all their enemies.They thought that their ruler should be of their own heritage, and wanted to expel any foreign rulers. Nationalism influenced the general public’s political action by putting them behind the idea of having a ruler from their own country, and made them dislike rulers from outside. It influenced the people’s social action because it connected them with people of the same heritage. Conservatism is essentially ‘sticking to the status quo.’ They wanted everything to go by the bible and for the clergy to have all the power, and hated rioting and new advances in anything, really. They liked aristocracies, the rich getting richer, and so on. Their political action was to keep everything the same, and their social action was to push the lower and middle class down. Though most people were in the middle and lower classes, conservatism was so successful because the rich people who supported it had so much more power than all the rest.