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Revolutions of 1848

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The Revolutions
of 1848
Revolution in France
Revolution in Habsburg areas
Revolution in Germany
Revolution in Italy
Revolution in Poland
Aftermath
The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations or the Year of Revolution, were a series of revolutions which erupted in Sicily and then, further triggered by the Revolution of 1848 in France, soon spread to the rest of Europe. These European Revolutions were the violent consequences of a variety of changes that had been taking place in Europe in the first half of the 19th century. In politics, both bourgeois reformers and radical politicians were seeking change in their nations' governments. In society, technological change was creating new ways of life for the working classes, a popular press extended political awareness, and new values and ideas such as nationalism and socialism began to spring up. The tinder that lit the fire was a series of economic downturns and crop failures that left the peasants and the poor working classes starving.

The result was a wave of revolution sweeping across Europe and raising hopes of liberal reform as far away as Brazil, where the rhetoric surrounding the Praieira revolt took many cues from European events, as did its thorough repression. Only the United Kingdom and Russia were missing: Russia had not yet a real bourgeois or proletarian class to initiate a revolution (and, more to the point, it lacked the communication between various groups of people to form such classes or to form committees to organize revolts). An exception to this was the Kingdom of Poland, where uprisings took place in 1830-31 (November Uprising), 1846 (Kraków Uprising) and in 1863-65 (January Uprising).

In the United Kingdom, the middle classes had been pacified by general enfranchisement in the Reform Act of 1832, with the consequent agitations, violence, and petitions of the Chartist movement that came to a head with the petition to Parliament of 1848. The repeal of the protectionist agricultural tariffs called the "Corn Laws" in 1846 had defused some proletarian fervor. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, revolution was far from the minds of those in Ireland, struggling and dying through the Potato Famine (the exception being William Smith O'Brien's debacle in County Tipperary). The United States remained profoundly isolated, increasingly involved in its own expansion.

Switzerland was also spared, having been through a civil war the previous year. However the introduction of the Swiss Federal Constitution in 1848 was a revolution in itself, laying the foundation of Swiss society as it is today.

Although the revolutions were put down quickly, in their span there was horrific violence on all sides. Tens of thousands were tortured and killed.

Although the immediate effects of the revolutions were short-term, there were lasting legacies.

Alexis de Tocqueville remarked in his Recollections that "society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror."

Contents

Legacy

. . . We have been beaten and humiliated . . . scattered, imprisoned, disarmed and gagged. The fate of European democracy has slipped from our hands. Pierre Joseph Proudhon Breunig, Charles (1977), The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789 - 1850 (ISBN 0393091430)
Ten years after the 1848 Revolutions, little had visibly changed, and many historians consider the revolutions a bloody failure.

On the other hand, both Germany and Italy were unified in somewhat over 20 years, and there were a few immediate successes for some revolutionary movements, notably in the Habsburg lands. Austria and Prussia eliminated feudalism by 1850, improving the lot of the peasants. European middle classes made political and economic gains over the next twenty years; France kept its universal manhood suffrage. Russia would later free the serfs on February 19, 1861. The Habsburgs finally had to give the Hungarians more self-determination in the Ausgleich of 1867, although this in itself resulted only in the rule of autocratic Magyars in Hungary instead of autocratic Germans.

Most of what the revolutionaries wanted they eventually got. After the middle classes had much of what they desired, they sometimes confounded the Marxists by giving more power to the lower classes.

But in 1848, the revolutionaries were idealistic and divided by the multiplicity of aims for which they fought -- social, economic, liberal, and national. Conservative forces exploited these divisions, and revolutionaries suffered from mediocre leadership. Middle-class revolutionaries feared the lower classes, evidencing different ideas; counter-revolutions exploited the gaps. As some reforms were enacted and the economy improved, some revolutionaries lost heart. When the Habsburgs lightened the burden of feudalism, many peasants lost heart; similar failures occurred elsewhere. International support likewise lacked.

Autocratic Russia did not support such revolutions at home, but actively helped the Austro-Hungarian Empire in her war with a restive Hungarian splinter group. Both Britain and Russia opposed Prussia's plans on Schleswig-Holstein, tarnishing their view among Germany's liberal nationalists.

Why did nothing happen in Great Britain and Russia? Russia was still feudal and oppressive, but Great Britain was mostly industrialized. Freedom of speech and the electoral reform of 1832 in Britain are telling differences with the rest of Europe.

The net result in the German states and France was more autocratic systems, despite reforms such as universal male suffrage in France, and strong social class systems remained in both. What reforms were enacted seemed like sops thrown to quell dissent, while privilege remained untouched. Nationalistic dreams also failed in 1848.

The Italian and German movements did provide an important impetus. Germany was unified under the iron hand of Bismarck in 1871 after Germany's 1870 war with France; Italy was unified in 1861 as the United States was split into two nations and exploding into internecine civil war.

Some disaffected German bourgeois liberals (the Forty-Eighters, many atheists and freethinkers) migrated to the United States after 1848, taking their money, brains, and skills out of Germany and siding with the Union in the American Civil War, as they found slavery (and by implication, the Confederacy) distasteful with their image of America. Over 177,000 German Americans served the Union cause. Like 1861 for the United States, 1848 was a watershed year for Europe, after which things were never again the same.

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References

 

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