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

(a) The middle-class world view in Adam Smith, Malthus and Bentham

The three thinkers show how a rising commercial and industrial middle class came to see the world, although they did not all write as direct observers of the factory age. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) attacked mercantilist regulation and guild privilege, and argued that division of labour and the self-interested exchange of a free market, as if by an invisible hand, raise national wealth. This gave the manufacturer and merchant a doctrine of laissez-faire and free trade. Malthus's Essay on Population (1798) claimed that population grew geometrically and food only arithmetically, so poverty was a natural check. It was used against the old Poor Law and to justify the harsher New Poor Law of 1834. Bentham's utilitarianism, set out in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789), judged laws by the greatest happiness of the greatest number and became the creed of reformers who wanted rational government, efficient administration and an end to aristocratic privilege.

Common features follow. All three were individualist, rationalist and secular, distrusted custom and inherited privilege, and treated the market and calculation as guides to policy. Their ideas fitted the middle class's confidence in progress and its claim to political power, which led to the Reform Act of 1832.

But they were not simple apologists. Smith was hostile to merchant conspiracies and wanted wages to rise, and Bentham pressed for reform of prisons, law and poor relief. Malthus, meanwhile, offered a pessimism that placed the burden of poverty on the poor. Owen, the Chartists and later Marx challenged this middle-class outlook.

The judgement is that the thinkers both expressed and shaped the middle-class view, with confidence in markets and reform, and with a limited sense of social responsibility.

(b) The stages of Italian unification, 1848–1870

The process moved through five stages. In 1848–49 revolts broke out against Austria and the Italian rulers. Charles Albert of Piedmont declared war on Austria but was beaten at Custoza (1848) and Novara (1849), and abdicated in favour of Victor Emmanuel II. Mazzini and Garibaldi's Roman Republic (1849) was crushed by French troops, and Venice fell. Piedmont kept its constitution, and so became the hope of the nationalists.

The second stage was Piedmontese preparation under Cavour, Prime Minister from 1852. He modernised the economy and army, and took part in the Crimean War (1855) to gain a place at the Congress of Paris (1856). At Plombières (1858) he secured Napoleon III's promise of help against Austria.

In the third stage, the war of 1859 with Austria (Magenta and Solferino) gave Lombardy to Piedmont, despite the armistice of Villafranca. Plebiscites brought in Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Romagna in 1860, while Savoy and Nice went to France.

The fourth was Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand (May 1860), which took Sicily and Naples and handed them to Victor Emmanuel at Teano. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in March 1861, and Cavour died in June.

The last stage added Venetia in 1866, in alliance with Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War, and Rome in September 1870, when French troops withdrew because of the Franco-Prussian War and Italian troops entered through Porta Pia. Garibaldi's attempts on Rome, at Aspromonte (1862) and Mentana (1867), had failed.

(c) The Treaty of Versailles and the seeds of the Second World War

The claim has force. The treaty, signed on 28 June 1919, imposed terms that Germans called a diktat. Article 231, the war-guilt clause, justified reparations, later fixed at 132 billion gold marks, and Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine, the Polish Corridor, its colonies and, for fifteen years, the Saar. The Rhineland was demilitarised, the army limited to 100,000 and union with Austria forbidden. The resentment, the hyperinflation of 1923 and the Ruhr occupation weakened the Weimar Republic, which the Nazis later exploited, as Keynes had warned in The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). Self-determination was applied unevenly, leaving Germans in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and Italy and Japan felt cheated.

But the treaty was not the sole cause. The Dawes (1924), Locarno (1925) and Young (1929) settlements eased it, and the Depression, Hitler's ideology, appeasement and the weakness of Britain and France were decisive. Foch's remark that it was an armistice for twenty years was prophetic, but war was not inevitable. The judgement is that Versailles sowed seeds that later events allowed to grow.