Reactionary
A reactionary is a person or political position that opposes social or political change and favors restoring an earlier order.
Conservatism: A political tradition that values continuity, inherited institutions, and cautious change. Conservatism may resist rapid reform without seeking to restore a superseded social order.
French Revolution: A period of political and social upheaval in France beginning in 1789 that ended the monarchy and transformed Europe. The Revolution created the political setting in which reactionary opposition took shape.
Political nostalgia: A political appeal that idealizes an earlier period as better than the present. Nostalgia supplies an emotionally compelling image of the order reactionaries seek to restore.
Carlist Wars: A series of nineteenth-century Spanish civil wars over succession, regional rights, and political order. Carlists fought to restore a traditionalist monarchy against liberal political change.
Counter-Enlightenment: A broad intellectual reaction against Enlightenment emphases on reason, universalism, and political reform. Its critiques supplied ideas later used to challenge revolutionary and liberal change.
Revolution: A rapid, fundamental transformation of a political or social order. Revolution seeks the kind of rupture reactionaries resist and may try to reverse.
Congress of Vienna: A 1814–1815 diplomatic meeting that reorganized Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Its settlement sought to restore dynastic legitimacy and contain revolutionary change.
Traditionalism: An outlook that treats inherited customs and institutions as sources of authority and continuity. Appeals to inherited practice can justify resistance to reforms labeled disruptive.
White Terror: A wave of counterrevolutionary violence in France during 1795, directed against Jacobins and other revolutionaries. It illustrates violent retaliation following the revolutionary upheaval reactionaries opposed.
Reactionary modernism: The combination of modern technology with anti-liberal, nationalist, or authoritarian political aims. It shows that reactionary politics can adopt modern tools rather than simply restore old institutions.