The social disorder in Europe created through the outcomes of the French and Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century had major impacts on the course of European history and civilization for the following 150 years up in the middle of the 20th century. The French and Industrial Revolution not only changed the political and economic face of Europe dramatically, but also created “conflicts between the old traditional classes and the new emerging classes, namely the industrial and commercial middle-class and an increasing industrial working class” (lecture 04/03). This search for a new economic and political order resulted in the evolution of three different political philosophies or ideologies at the beginning of the 19th century. These emerging new political ideologies were reactionary conservatism, liberalism and socialism.
The struggle between these political ideologies should dominate European politics, society and economy for the next 100 years, in which most of Europe adopted a liberal social and economic order under conservative political reign. The collapse of this liberal order in the successions of World War I created a new search for order and a radicalization of politics to the right and left resulting in new political ideologies, such as Fascism and new forms of social order.
Conservatism as a political philosophy is defined by the British statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) as “a disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve"(Burke, From Reflections on the Revolution in France). Conservatism was the reaction of the Ancien Regime, the traditional land owning aristocratic elite, to the political and economic changes in Europe. These forces, who found famous spokesmen in personalities such as the Austrian foreign minister Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859) or Tsar Alexander I (1777-1825), tried to “restore stability of the traditional European power” (lecture (04/03) and to restore the old system. Even though conservatives do not reject...