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Reformism is a type ofsocial movement that aims to bring asocial or also apolitical system closer to the community's ideal. Areform movement is distinguished from moreradical social movements such asrevolutionary movements which reject those old ideals, in that the ideas are often grounded inliberalism, although they may be rooted insocialist (specifically,social democratic) orreligious concepts. Some rely on personal transformation; others rely on small collectives, such asMahatma Gandhi'sspinning wheel and the self-sustaining village economy, as a mode ofsocial change.Reactionary movements, which can arise against any of these, attempt to put things back the way they were before any successes the new reform movement(s) enjoyed, or to prevent any such successes.
After two decades of intensely conservative rule, the logjam broke in the late 1820s with the repeal of obsolete restrictions onNonconformists, followed by the dramatic removal of severe limitations on Catholics in Britain.[1][2]
TheRadical movement campaigned forelectoral reform, againstchild labour, for areform of the Poor Laws,free trade,educational reform,prison reform, andpublic sanitation.[3] Originally this movement sought to replace the exclusivepolitical power of thearistocracy with a moredemocratic system empoweringurban areas and themiddle andworking classes. The energy of reform emerged from the religious fervour of the evangelical element in the established Church of England, and Evangelical workers in the Nonconformist churches, especially the Methodists.[4]
Reformers also used the scientific methodology ofJeremy Bentham and the utilitarians to design specific reforms, and especially to provide for government inspection to guarantee their successful operation.[5] The greatest success of the Reformers was theReform Act 1832.[6] It gave the rising urban middle classes more political power, while sharply reducing the power of the low-population districts controlled by rich families.[7] Despite determined resistance from theHouse of Lords to the bill, this act gave more parliamentary power to the liberals, while reducing the political force of the working class, leaving them detached from the main body of middle class support on which they had relied. Having achieved the Reform Act 1832, the Radical alliance was broken until the Liberal-Labour alliance of the Edwardian period.[8]
TheChartist movement in nineteenth-century Britain soughtuniversal suffrage. A historian of the Chartist movement observed that "The Chartist movement was essentially an economic movement with a purely political programme."[9] A period of bad trade and highfood prices set in, and the drastic restrictions onPoor Law relief were a source of acute distress. TheLondon Working Men's Association, under the guidance ofFrancis Place, found itself in the midst of a great unrest. In the northern textile districts the Chartists, led byFeargus O'Connor, a follower ofDaniel O'Connell, denounced the inadequate Poor Laws. This was basically a hunger revolt, springing from unemployment and despair. In Birmingham, the olderBirmingham Political Union sprang to life under the leadership ofThomas Attwood. The Chartist movement demanded basic economic reforms, higher wages and better conditions of work, and a repeal of the obnoxious Poor Law Act.[10]
The idea of universal male suffrage, an initial goal of the Chartist movement, was to include all males as voters regardless of their social standing. This later evolved into a campaign for universal suffrage. This movement sought to redraw the parliamentary districts within Great Britain and create a salary system for elected officials so that workers could afford to represent their constituents without a burden on their families.
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Many considerMary Wollstonecraft'sVindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) to be the source of the reformers' long-running campaign for feminist inclusion and the origin of theWomen's Suffrage movement.Harriet Taylor was a significant influence onJohn Stuart Mill's work and ideas, reinforcing Mill's advocacy ofwomen's rights. Her essay "Enfranchisement of Women" appeared in theWestminster Review in 1851 in response to a speech byLucy Stone given at the firstNational Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1850, and it was reprinted in the United States. Mill cites Taylor's influence in his final revision ofOn Liberty (1859), which was published shortly after her death, and she appears to be obliquely referenced in Mill'sThe Subjection of Women.[11]
A militant campaign to include women in the electorate originated in Victorian times.Emmeline Pankhurst's husband, Richard Pankhurst, was a supporter of the women's suffrage movement and had been the author of the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882. In 1889, Pankhurst founded the unsuccessfulWomen's Franchise League, and in October 1903 she founded the better-knownWomen's Social and Political Union (later dubbed 'suffragettes' by theDaily Mail),[12] an organization famous for its militancy. Led by Pankhurst and her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, the campaign culminated in 1918, when the British Parliament theRepresentation of the People Act 1918 granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who were householders, the wives of householders, occupiers of the property with an annual rent of £5, and graduates of British universities. There was also Warner's suffrage movement.
Earl Grey,Lord Melbourne andRobert Peel were leaders of Parliament during the earlier years of the British reform movement. Grey and Melbourne were of theWhig party, and their governments sawparliamentary reform, theabolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, andPoor Law reform. Peel was aConservative, whose Ministry took an important step in the direction oftariff reform with the abolition of theCorn Laws.
William Ewart Gladstone was a reformer. Among the reforms he helped Parliament pass was a system of public education in theElementary Education Act 1870. In 1872, he saw the institution of asecret ballot to prevent voter coercion, trickery and bribery. By 1885, Gladstone had readjusted the parliamentary district lines by making each district equal in population, preventing one MP from having greater influence than another.
The Mexican Liberal Party, led byBenito Juárez andSebastián Lerdo de Tejada, guided the emergence of Mexico, as anation state, fromcolonialism. It envisioned a modern civil society andcapitalist economy. All citizens wereequal before the law, and Mexico's 1829abolition of slavery was reaffirmed. The Liberal program, documented in the1857 Constitution of Mexico, was based on:[17]
The Tanzimat, meaningreorganization of theOttoman Empire, was a period of reformation that began in 1839 and ended with theFirst Constitutional Era in 1876. The Tanzimat reform era was characterized by various attempts to modernize theOttoman Empire, to secure its territorial integrity against nationalist movements and aggressive powers. The reforms encouragedOttomanism among the diverse ethnic groups of the Empire, attempting to stem the tide ofnationalist movements within the Ottoman Empire. The reforms attempted to integrate non-Muslims and non-Turks more thoroughly into Ottoman society by enhancing their civil liberties and granting them equality throughout the Empire. Peasants often opposed the reforms because they upset traditional relationships.[18]
TheRussian Empire in the 19th century was characterized by very conservative and reactionary policies issued by the autocratic tsars. The great exception came during the reign ofAlexander II (1855–1881), especially the 1860s. By far the greatest and most unexpected was the abolition of serfdom, which affected 23 million of the Empire's population of 74 million. They belonged to the state, to monasteries and to 104,000 rich gentry landowners.[19]
Theemancipation reform of 1861 that freed the 23 million serfs was the single most important event in 19th-century Russia and the beginning of the end for the landed aristocracy's monopoly of power. Emancipation brought a supply of free labour to the cities, stimulating industry, and allowed the middle class to increase in number and influence. The freed peasants did not receive any free land. They had to pay a special tax for what amounted to their lifetime to the government, which in turn paid the landlords a generous price for the land that they had lost. All the property turned over to the peasants was owned collectively by themir, the village community, which divided the land among the peasants and supervised the various holdings. Although serfdom was abolished, since its abolition was achieved on terms unfavourable to the peasants, revolutionary tensions were not abated, despite Alexander II's intentions. Revolutionaries believed that the newly freed serfs were merely being sold intowage slavery in the onset of the industrial revolution, and that thebourgeoisie had effectively replaced landowners.[20]
The judicial reforms were among the most successful and consistent of all his reforms.[21][22][23] A completely new court system and order of legal proceedings were established. The main results were the introduction of a unifiedjudicial system instead of a cumbersome set ofestates of the realm courts, and fundamental changes in criminal trials. The latter included the establishment of the principle ofequality of the parties involved, the introduction of publichearings, thejury trial, and a professional advocate that had never existed in Russia. However, there were also problems, as certain obsolete institutions were not covered by the reform. Also, the reform was hindered byextrajudicial punishment, introduced on a widespread scale during the reigns of his successors –Alexander III andNicholas II.[24] One of the most important results of the reform was wide introduction ofjury trials. The jury trial included three professional judges and twelve jurors. A juror had to possess real estate of a certain value. Unlike in modern jury trials, jurors not only could decide whether the defendant was guilty or not guilty but also could decide that the defendant was guilty but not to be punished, as Alexander II believed thatjustice withoutmorality is wrong. The sentence was rendered by professional judges.[25]
A host of new reforms followed in diverse areas.[26][21] The tsar appointedDmitry Milyutin to carry out significant reforms in the Russian armed forces. Further important changes were made concerning industry and commerce, and the new freedom thus afforded produced a large number oflimited liability companies.[27] Plans were formed for building a great network of railways, partly to develop the natural resources of the country, and partly to increase its power for defense and attack.[28]
Military reforms included universal conscription, introduced for all social classes on 1 January 1874.[29]
A new judicial administration (1864), based on the French model, introduced security of tenure.[30] A newpenal code anda greatly simplified system of civil and criminal procedure also came into operation.[28] Reorganisation of the judiciary occurred to include trial in open court, with judges appointed for life, a jury system and the creation of justices of the peace to deal with minor offences at local level. Legal historian SirHenry Maine credited Alexander II with the first great attempt since the time ofGrotius to codify and humanise the usages of war.[31]
Alexander's bureaucracy instituted an elaborate scheme of local self-government (zemstvo) for the rural districts (1864) and the large towns (1870), with elective assemblies possessing a restricted right of taxation, and a new rural and municipal police under the direction of theMinister of the Interior.[28]
The Alaska colony was losing money, and would be impossible to defend and wartime against Britain, so in 1867 Russiasold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million (equivalent to roughly $200 million in current dollars). The Russian administrators, soldiers, settlers, and some of the priests returned home. Others stayed to minister to their native parishioners, who remain members of the Russian Orthodox Church into the 21st century.[32]
Atatürk's Reforms were a series of significant political, legal, cultural, social and economic changes that were implemented under the leadership ofMustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s and 1930s in the newRepublic of Turkey.[33]
In the years between 1919 and 1923 Mustafa Kemal was at the forefront of the Turkish War of Independence and involved with the eradication of the antiquated institutions of the Osmanic Empire and in laying the foundations of the new Turkish State. He approached the National Congresses of Erzurum and Sivas to organise and lift the morale of the people in its determined opposition to the Forces of the Entente who were occupying Anatolia. By the end of these conventions he had managed to convey the message that the idea and the ideals of outdated imperialism ought be dropped so that people within the national boundaries could make decisions in accordance with the principles and general guidelines of an effective national policy. After the occupation of Istanbul by the Forces of the Entente he laid the foundations for the new Turkish State when in 1920 he united the Great National Assembly in Ankara. With the government of the Great National Assembly, of which he was president, Mustafa Kemal fought the Forces of the Entente and the Sultan's army which had remained there in collaboration with the occupying forces. Finally, on 9 September 1922 he succeeded in driving the American Forces back to Izmir, along with the other forces which had managed to penetrate the heartland of Anatolia. By this action he saved the country from invasion by foreign forces.[34]
The reform of the judiciary which was largely the work of the Minister of Justice Dmitry Zamyatin, his extremely important assistant Serge Zarudny, and several other enlightened officials, proved to be the most successful of the 'great reforms'. Almost overnight it transformed the Russian judiciary from one of the worst to one of the best in the civilized world. / Later the government tried on occasion to influence judges for political reasons, and, what is more important, in its struggle against radicalism and revolution it began to withdraw whole categories of legal eases from the normal procedure of 1864 and to subject them to various forms of the courts martial. But, while the reform of the judiciary could be restricted in application, it could not be undone by the imperial government, and, as far as the reform extended, modem justice replaced arbitrariness and confusion. Russian legal reform followed Western, especially French, models, but, as Kucherov and others have demonstrated, these models were skillfully adapted to Russian needs It might be added that the courts, as well as thezemstvo institutions, acquired political significance, for they served as centers of public interest and enjoyed a somewhat greater freedom of expression than was generally allowed in Russia.
Of no less significance was the judicial reform of 1864, of which Serge Zarudny was the chief promoter. Its basic points were the improvement of court procedure, introduction of the jury system and justices of the peace, and the organization of lawyers into a formal bar. The new courts proved equitable and efficient, and in this respect Russia could be compared favorably with the most progressive European countries. ... Most of the characteristics created by the reforms of Alexander II lasted until 1905, and some until 1917.
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