The Revolutions of 1848 Big Picture: the Revolutions of 184

1
The Revolutions of 1848

• Big Picture the Revolutions of 1848 were the
  result of the movement of Liberalism in the 19th
  century in Europe.
• Remember the contrast between political
  Liberalism and Conservatism?
• Simply put, political conservatives represented
  the values of the Ancien Regime

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Liberals sought
• Representative Governments
• Civil Liberties
• Improved conditions of the working classes
• In some cases, liberalism was tied to
  nationalism specifically, the desire to form
  states based on Ethnic unity. (Hungary)

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Immediate results were seemingly catastrophic,
  but the long term changes were generally halted
  by the reactions of the conservative powers in
  charge.
• Further, and this is a big issue, the liberals
  who sought political reform generally avoided the
  social changes connected with it.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• More importantly, there is no revolution for the
  working classes.
• There is no restructuring of the classes that
  have been exacerbated by the growing industrial
  revolution.
• There is no workers revolution in 1848 ironic
  because that is the year that the Communist
  Manifesto is published.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Two key issues before we start
• Britain and Russia do not undergo any manner of
  revolt in this time period for different reasons.
• The Continent, everywhere from France to Italy to
  the German States to the Hapsburg Empire, does
  under go some manner of revolution.
• Why not Britain and Russia?

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Britain
• The revolutions did not affect England because
  England had already gone beyond the goals the
  revolutionaries sought to achieve.
• Britain had a representative government, and a
  relatively progressive liberal economy.
• Key, this does not mean the England was worker
  friendly. No part of Europe was

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Russia
• They did not affect Russia because Russia had not
  yet developed the economic and social pressures
  which stimulate the liberal revolution.
• They literally were so far away from the impact
  of liberalism that revolution was not even a
  issue.
• Russia at this time is a country ruled by
  repressive Czars, and dominated by a feudal
  agrarian Economy.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The Rest of Europe?
• The revolutions of 1848 did, however, sweep
  across Europe from Paris in the west to cities
  throughout  Germany and Italy, to Berlin in
  Prussia, and to Vienna and Prague and Budapest in
  the Austrian Empire.
• This is part of the larger trend of the formation
  of the nation state in Europe.
• Another way of looking at it would be this

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Generally speaking, the trend in 19th century
  Europe of State formation shows the conflict
  between two- forces
• Established monarchies and family dynasties
  tended to represent the values of the Ancien
  Regime.
• Replacing these monarchies and families by
  representative governments meant a true shift in
  the role of government in society.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Blanket Statements
• The revolutions of 1848 occurred in cities where
  a middle class was often joined by university
  students, who shared liberal goals.
• They united temporarily with urban working people
  who sought to relieve the oppressive working
  conditions imposed upon them in the early
  industrial period.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Middle class people entrepreneurs, industrial
  managers, shopkeepers, professionals, could not
  identify with the workers and their goals.
  Therefore, the united front was short-lived.
• They could cooperate in overthrowing the
  government of the old regime, but they could not
  share in the effort to create a new government.
     

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The revolution hardly touched the countryside
  because the peasants did not participate in the
  revolution and had their own agenda.
• Wherever peasants enjoyed ownership of the land,
  they tended to be a conservative influence.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• More specifically, there was an element of crisis
  all over Europe which also contributed to the
  revolution.
• That is, a depression and sporadic famine and
  high unemployment were involved.
• Living conditions in cities were growing worse,
  and there were no social services to deal with
  the growing urban poor.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Revolutions in a case by case basis
• France
• The Habsburg Empire
• Italy
• German States

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The Revolutions of 1848

• France
• Louis Philippe and Francois Guizot (Minister)
• Political banquets had been held to criticize the
  government
• Poorer harvests and high unemployment in 1847 and
  1848 posed greater criticism to the monarchy.
• Hence, these banquets are forbidden by Louis.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Feb 1848 Guizot resigns under pressure from the
  Parisian mobs.
• Feb. 24. Louis Philippe abdicates and flees
  Paris.
• What now?
• Lamartine leads the provisional government
• Louis Blanc leads the Parisian workers in a more
  labor oriented movement.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• To review, here we see a split between those who
  seek merely to change the mechanism of
  government, to make it more politically
  liberalvs
• Those that are seeking true change for the poor
  of a country, specifically France.
• And, there was a tremendous amount of resistance
  in the rural areas concerning these Urban
  Radicals.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The provisional government clashed with the
  Parisian mobs, and this new government goes so
  far as to close the Paris workshops, which were
  set up as a means of training workers in a skill.
• Clearly, this is not a move to help the poor.
• The barricades are assaulted by the government
  troops, and the revolution is essentially ended
  here.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Louis Napoleon emerges
• These issues is the protection of private
  property, not the plight of the working poor.
• Not some Marxist revolution.
• The presidential election gives France the nephew
  of the Emperor, Napoleon.
• Little Napoleon calls and end to this Second
  Republic.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• What Louis Napoleon will do will be to gradually
  take power from the national Assembly, and be
  categorical in his belief that he, not they,
  represents the will of the people.
• He seizes power in a coup, much like his uncle.
• By 1852, France was under the Rule of Emperor
  Napoleon III
• France had, for the second time in less than
  fifty year, had gone from Republicanism to
  Cesarism.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The Habsburg Empire.
• Remember the issues that faced the Hapsburgs?
• Multi-ethnic population.
• It was dominated by a serf based ecoinomy
• Metternich was the poster boy for political
  conservatism
• It was in existence for the benefit of a dynastic
  familyno hint of a representative government
  here

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The problem within the problem is the desire of
  the Magyars (Hungarians) for ethnic unity.
• Louis Kossuth calls for independence for the
  Hungarians.
• Major disturbances in Vienna follow
• The army fails to deal with it, and Metternich
  surprisingly flees the country

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The Government eventually falls to the hands of a
  200 person committee.
• As a means of preservation, the Vienna Govt.
  declares that serfs are free, as a means of
  gaining their support.
• As Vienna continues to fragment, this has to give
  hope to the Hungarians, and it does.
• As the Hungarian diet passes legislation, the
  Emperor Ferdinand approves these measures because
  he can do little else.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Magyars goal, establish an independent state.
• What the Austrian do is to garner the support of
  those groups that would be harmed by the
  independence of the Hungarian independence
  movement.
• Groups like the Romanians, the Croats and the
  Serbs would be oppressed by the Magyars, and so
  the Austrians get their support and suppress the
  Magyar revolt.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Czech Nationalism
• The Czechs version of nationalism was the
  formation of a Pan-Slavic state, which we now
  will become a major issue in European history as
  the century progresses.
• This would be a state freed from the dominion of
  both the Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Empire
• Though the movement is quelled by General
  Windischgraetz, it does show a long-term issues
  of nationalism brewing in eastern Europe.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Italy
• Issue The rise of the so-called Romantic
  Republican movement.
• Italians began to see the possibility that
  Piedmont, under the guise of King Charles of
  Piedmont, leading the possibility of freedom from
  Austrian dominance of the Northern states.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Yet, the defeat of Piedmont by the forces lead by
  Austrian general Radetzky, prevented Piedmont
  from gaining autonomy.
• However, in Italy, in February, a radical
  insurrection in Rome forced the Pope, Pius IX,
  to flee and the radicals Proclaimed a Roman
  Republic.
• This was to be the place from which a unified
  Italy could be formed, Mazzini and Garibaldi are
  the two key figures in this.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The French help to defeat this Roman Republic,
  primarily because of the conservative nature of
  the Napoleonic government, and because France saw
  a possible threat in a unified Italy to their
  south.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Germany The Frustration of the Liberal Movement.
• Remember, as far as the Revolutions of 1848 are
  concerned, when France sneezes, all of Europe
  gets a cold.
• German will also undergo a flirtation of
  Liberalism, and an ultimate conservative reaction.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Prussia, the major German State, will be the
  focus for this Liberal uprising.
• Frederich William IV refuses to turn troops on
  protesters in Berlin.
• He believed that foreign intruders were
  responsible for this activism.
• This proves to be a huge short term mistake.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Frederich makes a series of concessions,
  including the promise of a Constitution and a
  promise that Prussia would lead a movement toward
  German unification.
• This is a short term example of monarchical
  concession to the revolutionaries.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• An assembly that was predominately democratic and
  radical is eventually ignored outright by then
  monarch.
• By April, the monarch had declared his own
  constitution , and voting was based on income,
  which of course meant that high income citizen
  could exert influence on this assembly.
• We are seeing a swing back to conservatism.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The Frankfurt Parliament.
• May 1848Frankfurt Parliament is formed to call
  for a unified German State.
• How could a movement like this face opposition?
• The working class was fearful of economic
  liberalism because it would eliminate protection
  to guilds.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• In Factthe parliament called in troops to
  repress urban workers who had, like the French,
  erected barricades.
• And, the issue of Unification was a another
  sticking point for the parliament.
• The issue was whether to include Austria in the
  unification movement.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• The Grossdeutsch solution favored the inclusion
  of Austria
• The Kleindeutsch solution favored exclusion.
• It Would the the latter of the two that would
  receive more support.
• Frederick William IV rejects a proposal that he
  led a Unified Germany He was king by God, not
  by some mortal decree
• The parliament was dissolved, and German
  liberalism never recovered.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• How can we assess the Revolutions of 1848?
• This ends, effectively, the era of political
  liberalism as a romantic and philosophical
  concept.
• Liberals/Nationalists knew now that they had to
  be more pragmatic, and less romantic.
• What would be the unifying factors in the
  creation of a Nation?

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Rather that relying on Language and cultural
  heritage in the formation of a national
  character
• It would be factors like railways, commerce,
  guns, soldiers and diplomacy that would unify a
  nation.
• We need only to look to Bismarck and his Real
  Politique as an example of the death of
  political liberalism.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• And, and this is very significant, workers would
  turn to more organized methods/tactics to achieve
  their ends
• Rather than taking to the barricades, they began
  to utilize trade unions and worker organizations
  to achieve their ends.

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The Revolutions of 1848

• Finally, this was the end of the revolutionary
  desires of the Middle Class.
• It was more concerned about protecting its
  property against the rise of political radicals.
• Specifically, the rise of Marxism.