This exhibition examines the question of why it is important to develop a wider European perspective on the forms of protest and contention that developed between 1815 and 1850?  There are a number of reasons:

The period can be seen as a final wave of reactions to the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleonic France.  It is not an exaggeration to say that Europe was convulsed by the quarter of a century from the initial crisis of debt in the French monarchy, through to the widespread domination of Europe by French forces, through to the final stuttering end in Napoleon's Hundred Days.  Portugal, Spain, Italy, North Africa, the Habsburg Empire, the low countries, Russia, and the lands of central and Eastern Europe were all profoundly affected by the changing constellations of power, the redrawing of boundaries, the mobilisation of mass armies, and the emergence of new ideas of government, administration and citizenship. 

The Congress of Vienna, that sat following the defeat of Napoleon and his exile to Elba, was intent on re-establishing the old monarchical order where possible, and with consolidating the supervisory role of the great powers in relation to the wider European scene.  It had not finished its deliberations before Napoleon reappeared on the southern shores of France and marched without opposition back into power.  His final defeat at Waterloo and exile to St Helena laid one ghost to rest, but the legacy of French republicanism and of Bonapartism remained powerful currents in French politics, and much more widely influential among those who looked for more popular control over their governments. The genie could not be securely returned to the bottle.

Out of Vienna came a number of new forms of governance and partition: great power supervision of the Italian and German states; the carving up of Poland; the creation of 'protectorates', such as the Ionian Islands and Malta; and a sense of remaining tutelage  for states such as Portugal, under British guidance.

These new experiences were also linked to an explosion on constitutional thinking and the emergence of 'chartes' or charters of government - becoming a central bone of contention, for example, in France, but also becoming a demand in many states for a set of terms of agreement about the conditions of rule and the preservation of personal and civil liberties.

And while European war between the Great Powers was avoided, we can see ongoing attempts to police the 'lesser' states, and to expand their reach and order their peripheries - in particular, the wider Mediterranean - with action in Algiers in 1816, the Iberian peninsular in 1823, Greece in 1827-32, Poland in 1830, Rome in 1848-9, and so on. 

Treating events in entirely national terms fails to recognise this wider convulsive state and a shared set of forces driving more local events.

This exhibition draws together a number of the interlocking themes that connect the very diverse range of materials to be found on the web-site.