The Reform Bill of 1832 was enacted by the British government in response to widespread political unrest in urban areas during the early 1830s. The Reform Bill extended suffrage to the urban middle class and restructured constituencies to reflect the population shift to urban areas. As such, the urban middle class was greatly empowered by the Reform Bill of 1832.

The years 1789 through 1848 were extremely tumultuous and varied in France. The French Revolution ushered in a wave of unprecedented liberalism that was quickly submerged by the emerging reactionaries. Following the defeat of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna, the French Bourbon monarch Louis XVIII assumed the throne and reverted the French government almost back to pre-revolution levels of absolutism. Liberalism and democracy were quashed in the years between 1815 and 1848, until popular discontent flared up again in the Revolutions of 1848.

The Revolutions of 1848 were a popular uprising against the conservative, reactionary, and absolutist governments of Europe. The summer of 1848 was a time of great upheaval across the European continent. The only two countries to be spared were England and Russia. England avoided revolution because the government had already responded to popular sentiment and become more liberal, whereas Russia was insufficiently developed to even have an organized working class which could effect such a revolution.

The French political situation in the nineteenth century was highly volatile and variable. A series of contrasting governments were established and then overthrown. This would persist until the First World War, by which time the French political situation had stabilized significantly.

The Austrian Empire (at this time probably more accurately called the Habsburg Empire) suffered immensely from the Revolutions of 1848. The Habsburg Empire had a different set of problems than the other empires of Europe; they were able to contain liberalism, but rampant nationalism spread throughout the diverse ethnic groups of the Habsburg dominion. By the time the revolutions were dying down, the Habsburgs presided over a dramatically weakened and less-centralized empire. This would have direct consequences leading to the outbreak of World War One.

The British and French experiences of democracy and government were very different in the nineteenth century. Whereas the British government continued uninterrupted throughout this period, the French government collapsed and was reformed on several occasions. Whereas the British tended to experience gradual change and a progressive growth of suffrage rights, the French tended to experience violent upheaval followed by violent repression; nonetheless, by the outbreak of the First World War, both nations had healthy and liberal societies where the vast majority of white men could vote.

The Carlsbad Decrees were issued in 1819, shortly after the Congress of Vienna. They may be understood as part of the wider political climate in Europe at the time whereby the powers were trying to suppress the radicals, liberals, and nationalists who were emerging all over Europe. The Carlsbad Decrees were an attempt to suppress liberalism and nationalism in the various German princely states. In the short term, they were wildly successful; however, they were not as successful in the long term.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is so-called because it was largely devoid of bloodshed. The reigning monarch, James II, had challenged the autonomy of Parliament and worried the country with his Catholic sympathies. So, Parliament invited the Dutch monarch William to come over and seize the throne, which he then did. As a condition of his coronation, William had to promise that the constitution and Parliament would have supremacy over the crown. And thus, the Glorious Revolution ensured the supremacy of constitutionalism in Britain.

In the wake of the Revolutions of 1848, Louis Napoleon (taking advantage of his famous heritage) took over power from Louis Philippe. He instituted the Second French Republic, which he was later (in 1851) able to peacefully transition into the Second French Empire with himself as Emperor.

The Enclosure Movement began in England in the fourteenth century and really took off in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a very slow and gradual movement away from feudal landholding and towards private property. It involved peasants being forcibly removed from the lands of the aristocracy and had dramatic effects on the economic, political, and social structure of England and, later, Britain.