ABSTRACT
Political life in Europe during the third quarter of the nineteenth century was characterized by four major trends: the triumph of reform, the domination of the notables, the hegemony of liberalism and the appeal of nationalism. This chapter considers two main areas of governmental action and improvement. One was removing impediments to a free market in land, labour and commodities. The second was the expansion of political participation. The prevalence of reform both reinforced and interacted with another characteristic feature of the period, the domination of the notables, that is, the locally most influential men. Local and influential are the key words here, and they express the basic features of notables politics. One is that political life was dominated by those with influence, stemming from their wealth and property and from their connections to the government. Both the triumph of reform and the domination of the notables are examples of the fundamental hegemony of liberal ideas in this period.
