The politics of the province in the early nineteenth century saw local expectations of Prussian reforms, increased self-government, and a constitution largely stymied.

Although Prussia had long owned territory in Westphalia, King Frederick William III made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred to annex the entirety of the Kingdom of Saxony.

In the Duchy of Westphalia and the two Sayn-Wittgensteiner principalities, however, the old regional legal traditions were retained until the introduction of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (civil law code) on 1 January 1900.

Dietrich Wilhelm Landfermann [de], who was later a member of the Reichstag, wrote as a schoolboy in 1820, that it was not for the "pathetic squabbles of princes" that people had fought in 1813, but so that "justice and law would have to be the foundation of public life as well as citizenship.

The high voter turnout shows that, despite all the restrictions, the bourgeoisie saw the Landtag as a forum for the expression of their views (the lower classes had no voting rights).

Equally untimely was the revised civic ordinance (Städteordnung) of 1831, which heavily restricted the voting right for town councils and provided for organs of self-government which were really just offices of the central government.

The liberal Catholic journalist, Johann Friedrich Joseph Sommer wrote "contemporary events, like those of the last ten years, have stirred up the docile Westphalian and have contributed no little degree to bring a kind of religious somnolence to an end."

[8] The democratic left of the "Rhede Circle" celebrated the coming of a new era in the Westphälisches Dampfboot, "The people of Europe, freed from the oppressive nightmare, have almost caught their breath."

There were also countervailing opinions, like that of Bielfeld superintendent and later member of the Prussian National Assembly, Clamor Huchzermeyer [de], who spoke of a "disgraceful event", in which the "simple Philistine" expected "that a constitution would sweep all misery and inequality from the world."

The labour movement, in the form of the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverbrüderung [de] (General German Workers' Brotherhood) had very little representation in Westphalia, compared with the Rhineland.

In Catholic areas, the election of Archduke John of Austria as regent (Reichsverweser) of the new German Empire by the Frankfurt Parliament was met with great enthusiasm and patriotic celebrations were held in Winterberg and Münster, for example.

After the Prussian National Assembly was dissolved on 5 December 1848, democratic candidates like Johann Matthias Gierse [de] managed to win election to the lower chamber of the Landtag of Prussia.

In the "Northwest German linen belt," which stretched from western Münsterland, through Tecklenburg, Osnabrück, and Minden-Ravensberg, to modern Lower Saxony, household production developed into proto-industrial levels.

From the end of the 18th century, rural highways (Chaussee) began to be constructed, rivers in the lower part of the Ruhr were made navigable for ship traffic, and canals were built.

While some cities, like Dortmund and Bochum, had a long civic heritage to look back on, places like Gelsenkirchen and Recklinghausen grew from small villages to major centres in a matter of decades.

On the other hand, the limits of these positive developments are clear from the continued prevalence of tuberculosis, work-related illnesses like silicosis, and the general strain on the environment from mining and industry.

The strike in the Westphalian and Rheinish coal mining areas provided a model for miners in Sauerland, the Aachen coalfields [de], and even in Silesia in the same year.

Especially following the Kulturkampf, the Centre Party (Zentrum), based on the traditional patterns from the early nineteenth century and the Revolution of 1848, largely monopolised politics in the Catholic parts of the province.

Similarly, the later Chancellor Franz von Papen, who belonged to the far right wing of the party, came from rural Werl and had his political base in Münsterland.

Alongside increasing secularisation, the social focus of political Catholicism was a reason why the Centre Party lost support in middle-class areas during the Weimar Republic.

Disenchantment with the party's approach to the Ruhr uprising in 1920, the hyperinflation between 1921 and 1923, and the Great Depression in the 1930s led many workers to move to the far left, initially to syndicalism and later to communism.

[18] In growing cities like Dortmund and Bielefeld, which had a considerable bourgeoisie and a comparatively strong middle class, the SPD was unable to dominate the political landscape.

The broad support for the revolution soon waned however, in the context of the elections for the Weimar National Assembly, as Catholics opposed the "new Kulturkapf" of Minister Adolph Hoffmann (USPD).

During the period of hyperinflation, Westphalia printed some Notgeld ("emergency money") with portraits of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, the Baron vom Stein, and the heraldic Saxon Steed, with face values of up to a billion marks [de].

During the Republic, the process of community formation and the establishment of large cities, which had begun in 1875 with Münster, continued and expanded, reaching its peak in 1929 with the Law on the communal restructuring of the Rhinish-Westphalian industrial area [de].

In the March 1933 elections, the Nazi party averaged 44% of the vote across Germany, but only 28.7% in the largely Catholic Münster district, 33.8% in mixed-religion Arnsberg, and 40.7% in mostly Protestant Minden.

The strongest Christian unions in the province hoped to escape from their status as banned free organisations by issuing statements of subservience to the Nazi party and joining the German Labour Front.

On the night of 16–17 May 1943, RAF Lancaster Bombers ("The Dambusters") during Operation Chastise breached the dam of the Möhne Reservoir, causing a flood which killed at least 1,579 people.

In order to strengthen self-rule in the provinces, the Westphalian provincial diet was reorganised as a legislature composed of representatives elected from the assemblies of the rural counties and independent cities in 1886.

From 1933, in the course of the abolition of parliamentarism in Nazi Germany, the Landeshauptmann was appointed by the central Prussian government, presided over by Hermann Göring, and became subject to the authority of the Öberpräsident.