(a) The impact of industrial revolution on the middle class world view is reflected in the views of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus…

The nineteenth century witnessed a dual transformation of the European order, driven economically by industrial capitalism and politically by the forces of nationalism and imperial diplomacy.

The Industrial Revolution and Bourgeois Worldview

The Industrial Revolution dismantled feudal-mercantilist structures and elevated the industrial bourgeoisie, whose socioeconomic aspirations were articulated through classical political economy and utilitarian philosophy.

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) mirrored the rising middle class’s hostility toward aristocratic privileges, monopolies, and mercantilist restrictions. By conceptualizing the "invisible hand" and laissez-faire, Smith provided an optimistic justification for free-market capitalism, positing that the unfettered individual pursuit of self-interest generated universal national wealth.

Conversely, Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) embodied bourgeois anxieties regarding rapid urbanization and working-class reproduction outstripping the food supply. Malthus’s pessimistic scarcity thesis justified wage suppression and the reform of the Poor Laws, transforming poverty into an individual moral failing rather than a systemic flaw of industrial capitalism.

Jeremy Bentham provided the philosophical legitimation for this emerging order through Utilitarianism. His principle of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" offered a metric of calculative rationality, championing legal and institutional reforms to protect private property, dismantle traditional encumbrances, and foster market efficiency.

While Smith was an optimist of productive expansion, Malthus a prophet of demographic limits, and Bentham an architect of institutional rationality, all three converged to articulate the class standpoint of the emerging industrial bourgeoisie, establishing market-driven individualism as the normative world order.

Stages of Italian Unification (1848–1870)

Italian unification (Risorgimento) progressed from romantic insurrection to pragmatic statecraft across five distinct stages:

The first stage arose from the 1848 revolutions. The defeat of King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia against Austria in the First Italian War of Independence exposed the inadequacy of republican insurrections and Italia farà da sé (Italy will act alone). Leadership consequently shifted to Piedmont under King Victor Emmanuel II and Count Cavour, who modernized the state and deployed realpolitik to internationalize the Italian question.

The second stage unfolded in 1859. Securing a secret military alliance with Napoleon III at Plombières, Cavour provoked Austria into war. Franco-Piedmontese victories at Magenta and Solferino liberated Lombardy, while nationalist uprisings in Tuscany, Parma, and Modena culminated in plebiscites for annexation to Piedmont.

The third stage was Garibaldi’s southern campaign in 1860. Leading the "Expedition of the Thousand," Giuseppe Garibaldi overthrew the Bourbon monarchy in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Subordinating republican ideals to national unity, Garibaldi handed his conquests to Victor Emmanuel II at Teano. Following popular plebiscites, the unified Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in March 1861.

The fourth stage occurred in 1866. Italy allied with Bismarck in the Austro-Prussian War (Third Italian War of Independence). Despite Italian defeats at Custoza and Lissa, Prussia’s decisive victory forced Austria to cede Venetia.

The final stage culminated in 1870. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War forced Napoleon III to withdraw the French garrison guarding the Papacy. Italian royal troops breached the Porta Pia in September 1870, annexing Rome and establishing it as the national capital.

The Treaty of Versailles and the Second World War

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) undeniably sowed structural grievances in interwar Europe. The "War Guilt" clause (Article 231), crippling reparations, territorial dismemberment (loss of Alsace-Lorraine and the Polish Corridor), and severe demilitarization engendered pervasive revanchism across Germany. The institutional weakness of the League of Nations further undermined collective security.

However, viewing Versailles as the sole determinant of the Second World War is historically reductive. The treaty was considerably more moderate than the terms Germany imposed on Russia at Brest-Litovsk (1918). While A.J.P. Taylor underscored the structural flaws of Versailles in creating an unstable balance of power, revisionist historiography demonstrates that war was not an inevitable outcome of 1919.

The catastrophic impact of the 1929 Great Depression, aggressive fascist and Nazi racial-imperialist ideologies, Japanese expansionism in Asia, and the strategic miscalculations of Anglo-French appeasement acted as the primary operational catalysts. Versailles created the psychological grievances and institutional vulnerabilities, but deliberate policy choices in the 1930s ultimately ignited the global conflagration.

The economic, nationalist, and diplomatic currents of the long nineteenth century reshaped Europe by establishing bourgeois-dominated nation-states, yet left a precarious balance of power that fractured under twentieth-century ideological and economic crises.