ABSTRACT
In most European countries, liberal governments were in power and attempting an aggressive programme of reforms. There were conservatives in power in some countries for some or all of the decade, including in Russia, the Scandinavian countries and, more surprisingly, in France and Great Britain, countries which contemporaries saw as the liberal western powers. Liberal opposition to the Catholic Church was strongest in Germany, where it was mixed in with conflicts dating from the era of national unification, emerging from two wars between predominantly Protestant Prussia and the Catholic Great Powers Austria and France. The transition from predominantly liberal to predominantly conservative governments took place in different European countries from the late 1870s through to the mid-1880s. A constant background to this power shift was the economic crisis of the period, the sharp recessions and prolonged periods of slow economic growth, and the principled refusal of liberal governments, believers in free market economics, to do anything about them.
