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Article: Kahan, Alan S. Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- History: Review of New Books
- Article date:
- March 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Kahan, Alan S. Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: The Political Culture of Limited Suffrage New York: Palgrave Macmillan 256 pp., $69.95, ISBN 1-4039-1174-6 Publication Date: October 2003
It is truly startling how most histories of nineteenth-century Europe overlook the severe suffrage restrictions that largely determined that period's politics and policies. Some major countries (the Habsburg Empire before 1860 and Russia before 1905) had no elections at all, and virtually all others (including "liberal" constitutional democracies such as the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) enfranchised fewer than 5 percent of their total populations.