A Longer Age of Enlightenment

Most historians view the Age of Enlightenment as having closed with the French Revolution. After that, several monarchies that had formerly been pro-Enlightenment (Austria, Sweden, Prussia, Russia; and to a lesser extent the Italian States and Spain) slipped further and further into reactionary policies due to them being frightened by the excesses of the French Revolution and desire after Vienna to prevent such a thing happening again.
Bad luck St. Petersburg rebelled in December 1825, Paris revolted in 1830, and most of Europe in 1848.

With no French Revolution or its spin-offs, how far could the Enlightenment have (reasonably) progressed before it started turning back on itself? Would a reactionary movement have still taken place?
 
I think it really does depend what happens in France.Something has to happen, they cannot go on as they are, and that what may determine many other things.
 
So what if France gets a Friedrich the Great-Leopold II type monarch with the sort of reforms that that implies? Or even a Gustaf III type (though Bourbons were rarely statecraft genii).
 
Changing the French monarch is rather easy: The first marriage of the Dauphin might lead to a healthy son born in 1746, or his first son from his second marriage (Louis Joseph, Duc de Bourgogne) might survive and become king. Of course, in the interest of recognizability, having the second son survive would be even better: The Duc d'Aquitaine, Xavier Marie Joseph, born 1753, crowned c.1774 as Xavier Ier would be the first non-Louis king for about 164 years.
 
It might be worth asking how much rulers like - for example Tsar Paul would be pro-enlightenment anyway, even without the French Revolution.

"Enlightenment" attracted some monarchs, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in very deeply anywhere. I'm not sure it can be extended easily just by avoiding the excesses of the French Revolution, therefore.
 
It might be worth asking how much rulers like - for example Tsar Paul would be pro-enlightenment anyway, even without the French Revolution.

"Enlightenment" attracted some monarchs, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in very deeply anywhere. I'm not sure it can be extended easily just by avoiding the excesses of the French Revolution, therefore.

I wonder if the fact it didn't sink in too deeply may have had something to do with the fact that it (in most cases) only came into power in the second half of the 18th century - from 1750 - and only functioned (with resistance) until the 1790s when most kings started turning their backs on it.

Forty years isn't really an all that long a time (by peaceable means) to sow the seeds of a movement across Europe in the 18th century.
 
I wonder if the fact it didn't sink in too deeply may have had something to do with the fact that it (in most cases) only came into power in the second half of the 18th century - from 1750 - and only functioned (with resistance) until the 1790s when most kings started turning their backs on it.

Forty years isn't really an all that long a time (by peaceable means) to sow the seeds of a movement across Europe in the 18th century.

But if it was something that was going to keep going, one would expect it to show in the heirs - Paul didn't abandon it, Paul just plain rejected it, for example.

I'm not saying it was doomed, but I think it was less an age and more a fad.
 
But if it was something that was going to keep going, one would expect it to show in the heirs - Paul didn't abandon it, Paul just plain rejected it, for example.

I'm not saying it was doomed, but I think it was less an age and more a fad.

Paul rejected it because he associated it with his mother. Gustav IV was brought up away from those ideas - because the nobles didn't want a repeat of his father. Most of the galaxy of Hapsburgs archdukes only succeeded in Austria, Tuscany, Hungary, Modena and Teschen after the Revolution had already broken out. While Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia and Willem V were too indolent to put the ideas into practice.
 
But if it was something that was going to keep going, one would expect it to show in the heirs - Paul didn't abandon it, Paul just plain rejected it, for example.

I'm not saying it was doomed, but I think it was less an age and more a fad.

Remember Paul would reject ANYTHING associated with his mother, so its really not surprising. But his son Alexander I was a fairly Enlightened monarch especially considering that he reigned during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. So without the French revolution and the subsequent wars he might be willing to go further instead of retreating into reactionary rule in the late 1810s and 1820s.

Paul rejected it because he associated it with his mother. Gustav IV was brought up away from those ideas - because the nobles didn't want a repeat of his father. Most of the galaxy of Hapsburgs archdukes only succeeded in Austria, Tuscany, Hungary, Modena and Teschen after the Revolution had already broken out. While Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia and Willem V were too indolent to put the ideas into practice.

Yeah I agree that many of the monarchs of this era did retreat into reactionary absolutism but without something to trigger it (ie the French Revolution) many of these Sovereigns will no doubt continue moving forward in the Enlightenment, if only to stay equal to their fellow sovereigns
 
Remember Paul would reject ANYTHING associated with his mother, so its really not surprising. But his son Alexander I was a fairly Enlightened monarch especially considering that he reigned during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. So without the French revolution and the subsequent wars he might be willing to go further instead of retreating into reactionary rule in the late 1810s and 1820s.

It's not about whether or not it's surprising, it's about the reality that a so-called enlightened sovereign failed to influence her heir to follow in her footsteps even before the French Revolution.

Paul was not born hating Catherine and what she did, so that Catherine failed here needs to be taken as an actual thing relevant to the chances of a continuation of the AoE and not just some bizarre reversal of the probable order of things.
 
It's not about whether or not it's surprising, it's about the reality that a so-called enlightened sovereign failed to influence her heir to follow in her footsteps even before the French Revolution.

Paul was not born hating Catherine and what she did, so that Catherine failed here needs to be taken as an actual thing relevant to the chances of a continuation of the AoE and not just some bizarre reversal of the probable order of things.

I'm not sure I understand what your getting at. I mean yes Catherine, while a successful Sovereign (one of the only Russian monarchs called the Great) had a very poor relationship with her son. But she did influence her grandson rather successfully, so we could say that she was successful in that regard. And considering Paul's personality and governing flaws, one could argue that he would be overthrown with or without a French revolution, allowing the AoE ton continue in at least Russia.
 
I'm not sure I understand what your getting at. I mean yes Catherine, while a successful Sovereign (one of the only Russian monarchs called the Great) had a very poor relationship with her son. But she did influence her grandson rather successfully, so we could say that she was successful in that regard. And considering Paul's personality and governing flaws, one could argue that he would be overthrown with or without a French revolution, allowing the AoE ton continue in at least Russia.

I'm getting at that Catherine failed to influence Paul, meaning that even if there is no French Revolution etc., the issues with a "continuation of the Age of Enlightenment" are shown very clearly - not every monarch is going to see those things as something to embrace. We can't just say Paul wasn't enlightened because he hated his mother as if that's irrelevant to whether or not there would be more enlightened monarchs.

So some monarchs will like the idea, some won't, and there's no particular reason for the majority to be the former.

And this is ignoring the issue of Alexander I, whose commitment to enlightenment ideals is not something I'd want to place very much faith in.

Fears of a French style revolution being responded to by repression and conservatism isn't the work of an enlightened, wise, foresighted monarch - it's the work of a cautious, autocratic someone who thinks that the only appropriate response to that is to tighten control rather than address what causes such problems.

It's perfectly understandable, but its not "enlightened absolutism", it's lip service and despotism. Which, frankly, I would say is perfectly fitting for the grandson of Catherine.
 
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Really the enlightenment kind of has a limited shelf life no matter what. It was inevitably going to run up against it's own contradictions and the elite where gonna turn on it pretty quickly when it happened.
 
Revisiting this topic, I'm wondering if the Enlightenment were to get an extra few years - say to 1815 - with no OTL Revolution, but perhaps an alt-war (4-5 years) involved, how would it develop.
 
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