1848 REVOLUTIONS

Question: How far is it correct to call the revolutionary waves in the first
half of 19th century Europe as the 'springtime of people'? Elaborate your
answer.

Answer: The revolutions of 1848 achieved important reforms but did not
fulfill the dreams of nationalist and republican revolutionaries. The Old
Regime—and conservatism— survived: Europe in 1870 was still governed
by monarchs. Radicals had achieved little democratization, but gradual
liberalization was under way in Victorian Britain and Alexander II made a
dramatic attempt to modernize Russia by abolishing serfdom.

Challenges to the Old Order: The ‘-Isms’

The changes that had shaken Europe in the generation before 1815—the
intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment, the political upheaval of the
French Revolution, the social transformation of industrialization—had all
produced pressures to reform the Old Regime. After 1815 these ideas of
change began to crystallize into political doctrines (or ideologies). These
new doctrines are known as the ―-isms‖ because they took names ending in
―ism‖, a linguistic vogue that began with the word liberalism and continued
with the terms nationalism and socialism in the 1830s, and soon included
such doctrines as radicalism, capitalism, Marxism, and feminism. These
doctrines were sometimes compatible with each other and sometimes in
conflict with each other, but they all called for changes in the Metternichian
order. The first of these doctrines, liberalism, was derived from the Latin
word liber (free) to denote a doctrine about individual freedom. Early
nineteenth-century liberalism (sometimes called classical liberalism to
distinguish it from later liberalism) sought individual freedoms (such as
freedom of speech), laws extending such as liberty to more individuals and
the removal of impediments to liberty (such as laws favoring members of
an established national church). To achieve such aims, liberals commonly
demanded two fundamental documents:
 (a) A constitution establishing a representative government and
specifying its powers, and
(b) a bill of rights guaranteeing individual liberties. Few countries
possessed such constitutions or bills of rights, and most monarchs
opposed them. Liberals, therefore, were among the primary
opponents of the Metternichian restoration.

A second ideology- nationalism- created additional problems for

conservatives. This doctrine shifted discussion toward the collective rights
of a nation. Nationalists asserted that it was possible to identify distinct
nations, based upon shared characteristics such as language. Other
nationalists defined their nation by a shared culture, history, or religion. All
advocated the creation of nation-states independent from foreign rule,
uniting members of the nation in a single, self-governing state. Nationalists
considered these objectives more important than the political rights that
liberals sought. As a Rumanian nationalist said in the 1840s, ―The question
of nationality is more important than liberty. Until a people can exist as a
nation, it cannot make use of liberty.‖ One could be both a liberal and
nationalist, seeking a nation-state that granted liberty, as Giuseppe Mazzini
did in his movement called Young Italy, but the two objectives often
conflicted with each other.

Governments especially dreaded radicalism, the term they usually applied

to democratic movements. Radicals endorsed liberalism but demanded
more; whereas liberals were willing to accept a limited franchise, radicals
called for a democratic franchise and sometimes for the abolition of
monarchy. In the words of Mazzini, radicals ―no longer believed in the
sanctity of royal races, no longer believed in aristocracy, no longer believed
in privilege.‖

The term socialism was also coined in the 1830s to identify doctrines
stressing social and economic equality. Marxist socialism did not become a
significant political philosophy until after midcentury, but many forms of pre-
Marxist socialism existed. The earliest, known as utopian socialism, grew
from critiques of industrial society. Robert Owen, the son of a poor Welsh
artisan, made a fortune as a textile manufacturer and devoted his wealth to
improving industrial conditions. He branded the factory system ―outright
slavery‖ and called for a new social order based on cooperation instead of
competition. Owen applied his ideas to his own factories at New Lanark,
Scotland, where he limited his profits and invested in building a comfortable
life for his workers. Utopian socialism took different forms in France. The
founder of French socialism, Count Henri de Saint- Simon, reversed the
pattern of Owen’s life: He was born to the nobility, squandered his fortune,
and died in poverty. He was a hero of the American Revolution, a prisoner
of the French Revolution, and a critic of the industrial revolution. He
denounced all economies in which ―man has exploited man‖ and called for
a new order based upon the principle ―from each according to his capacity,
to each according to his productivity.‖ A final doctrine of social change,
feminism, had not yet acquired that name (a late nineteenth-century
coinage) but already called for reconsideration of the role of women in
European society. Pioneers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de
Gouges had opened discussion of the woman question so effectively that
the Metternichian reaction could not contain this debate. European legal
systems, especially the Napoleonic Code, but also the British common law
tradition and the Germanic Frederician Code, explicitly held women in an
inferior position. The rights of women were exercised for them by men
(their fathers, then their husbands). Women were expected to remain
confined to limited spheres of activity—Kinder, Kirche, Küche (children,
church, cooking) in a famous German cliché. Formal education (especially
higher education) and educated occupations were closed to them. The
legal condition of women within marriage and the family began with an
obligation to obey their husbands, who legally controlled their wives’
wages, children, and bodies. Divorce was illegal in many countries and rare
everywhere (it required an act of parliament in Britain).

Another very misinterpreted form of reform was founded during the same
period known as Romanticism. Romanticism is difficult to define because it
was a reaction against precise definitions and rules, and that reaction took
many forms. The foremost characteristic of romanticism was the exaltation
of personal feelings, emotions, or the spirit. The emphasis upon feelings
led in many directions, from the passions of romantic love to the spirituality
of religious revival. Other attitudes also characterized romanticism: a return
to nature for themes and inspiration, the admiration of the Middle Ages
instead of classical Greece and Rome, a fascination with the exotic and the
supernatural, and the canonization of the hero or genius.

The emphasis upon feelings had begun in the late eighteenth century.
Rousseau, one of the central figures of Enlightenment rationalism, was a
transitional figure, who argued ―To exist is to feel!‖ German poet, Johann
von Goethe, similarly bridged the change from the classical to the romantic.
His short novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, depicted feelings so strong
that the protagonist’s suicide began a vogue for young men killing
themselves. The name of the school of German literature that evolved
around Goethe, the Sturm und Drang (―storm and stress‖) movement,
suggests the intensity of this emphasis upon feelings. Romanticism was the
triumph of that emphasis. At the peak of romanticism, the British poet
William Wordsworth simply defined poetry as ―the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings,‖ and the landscape painter John Constable similarly
insisted that ―painting is another word for feeling‖.

Challenging the Old Order: Revolutions, 1815–25

Despite their precautions, the conservative forces in power after 1815 could
not prevent revolutions. More than a dozen revolutions, from Portugal to
Russia, took place in the decade following the Congress of Vienna.
Historians normally describe these upheavals as liberal-national revolutions
because most rebellions sought national independence or constitutional
governments or both.

While the Congress of Vienna met, a Serbian uprising against Ottoman

Turkish rule began the first in a series of Balkan revolts against the
government in Constantinople. In 1816 Britain faced a slave rebellion in the
Caribbean. These uprisings provoked the conservative powers to adopt the
Troppau Protocol in 1818, but barely two years later came the successful
Spanish revolution (stimulated by King Ferdinand VII’s abolition of the
constitution of 1812 and by the impact of wars of independence in Spanish
America), which was a nagging problem for the congress system in 1820–
23. The British navy on the other hand supported the Monroe Doctrine
(proclaimed by the United States to block allied intervention in America), so
most of Latin America won its independence from Spain.

In Russia internal affairs were less simple. The enigmatic Alexander I had
come to the throne in 1801 at the age of twenty-four. Many historians
describe Alexander I as the hope of Russian liberalism. He received a
liberal education from his tutor, and he began his reign closely associated
with a liberal adviser, Michael Speranski. He founded four new universities
(doubling the total in the empire), at Kazan, Kharkov, Warsaw, and St.
Petersburg. He gave the Poles a constitution and allowed them to reopen
their parliament. Alexander I remained, however, an autocrat unchecked by
a constitution, an independent judiciary, or a parliament. He was a monarch
closer to eighteenth-century enlightened despotism than to nineteenth-
century liberalism, presiding over the most feudal economy in the world.

Alexander’s death in 1825 precipitated a crisis in Russia. This brought to

the throne Alexander’s youngest brother, Nicholas, whose training had
been for military command, not for government. The accession of Nicholas
I in December 1825 precipitated a rebellion led by liberal army officers.
These Decembrists wanted to abolish the monarchy, write a constitution,
and free the serfs, but their poorly organized revolt was quickly crushed.
Five were hanged and 121 others were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia.
The episode left the czar bitter and even less tolerant of liberalism.
Historians sometimes contrast the repressive regime of Nicholas I with the
liberal flirtations of Alexander I. More than seven hundred peasant
uprisings occurred during his reign, and Nicholas repressed them with the
same anger that he had shown the Decembrists. His eagerness to use the
Russian army earned him the nickname ―the gendarme of Europe‖.

The Liberal-Monarchical Compromise in France

The revolution of 1830 ended the rule of the Bourbon dynasty and removed
the ultras from power, but France remained a monarchy. The liberal
opponents of Charles X agreed upon his cousin, Louis-Philippe, the duke of
Orleans, as a new king. The Orleanist Monarchy, also called the July
Monarchy (1830–48), began with a liberalized constitution but few dramatic
changes. Louis-Philippe expanded voting rights from 90,000 to 170,000. He
relaxed censorship but still tried to control the press. He brought new social
strata into the government, but that chiefly meant that elite of wealth was
joined to that of the aristocracy. Guizot became the chief architect of the
Orleanist version of the French compromise, and he achieved greater
success than Louis XVIII in creating a liberal constitutional monarchy
comparable to the government in Britain. The July Monarchy became so
renowned for supporting banking, business, and industrial interests that it
was also called ―the Bourgeois Monarchy.‖

Orleanist sympathies for business and industry had two important

consequences. France experienced an important era of banking growth,
railroad building, and industrial expansion after 1830, and the new regime
deserves credit for its role in French industrialization and modernization.
Simultaneously, however, the workers, shopkeepers, and students who
had formed the crowds that drove Charles X into exile realized that the
revolution of 1830 had made little difference in their existence. So France
experienced further upheavals.

The Revolutions of 1830

Metternich once observed that when Paris caught a cold, Europe sneezed.
In 1830 that meant revolutions across Europe. The sneezing began in
August 1830 with unrest in the Belgian provinces of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands. The French-speaking, Catholic population of Belgium was
larger than the Dutch-speaking, predominantly Calvinist population of
Holland. The Belgian revolution of 1830 followed the French pattern: An
insurrection of workers forced the issue, but the educated elite seized
control of the situation. A national congress proclaimed Belgian
independence in October 1830, but reluctant, middle-class Belgians
supported the revolution only after the Dutch army bombarded Antwerp.

Insurrection spread across Europe from France and Belgium. German

anti-tax and food riots in 1830 revealed dissatisfaction with Metternichian
Germany, but they produced no major revolution. The revolution of 1830
reached Poland a few weeks after crossing the Rhine. The Polish
November Rising did not seek a constitution (which already existed), but an
end to Russian rule.

Historians do not normally list Britain among the revolutions of 1830.

Nonetheless, Britain experienced revolutionary activity in 1830–32. Rural
violence, known as the Captain Swing Riots, began in Kent and covered
southeastern Britain. The British may have avoided a revolution when
Parliament conceded reforms that the liberal middle classes wanted, thus
preventing the alliance of propertied classes with revolutionary workers that
had toppled Charles X in France.

The revolutions of 1830 are important for additional reasons beyond the
struggles for national independence or liberal constitutions. They showed
the beginnings of important new social movements that would shape the
nineteenth century. The best known of these is the rise of working class
radicalism; the events of 1830 (especially in Paris) provided a preview of
subsequent risings. Other movements, such as the early campaign for
women’s rights, also received a stimulus from the revolutions of 1830. In
France, for example, the revolution led to the foundation of a feminist
newspaper entitled La Femme libre (the Free Woman).

The Origins of the Revolutions of 1848

Historians have explained the revolutions of 1848 in many ways. Liberals

have stressed the repressive nature of government in the Metternichian
era. More conservative historians have blamed the discontent of the
intelligentsia, calling 1848 a ―revolt of the intellectuals.‖ Others have noted
the willingness of the newly influential middle classes such as bankers,
manufacturers, merchants, and professionals to accept revolutionary
change because they had few attachments to the aristocratic regime.
Marxists have pointed to the importance of the growing urban laboring
class living in poverty, while social historians have examined urbanization
and found an array of problems in housing, public health, and crime.

One of the more convincing explanations of the origins of the revolutions

has come from economic historians. In the late 1840s Europe
simultaneously experienced the last great subsistence crisis as a result of
agricultural failure and the first severe depression of the industrial age.
Crop failures meant expensive bread downturn in the business cycle meant
high unemployment.

The agricultural crisis began with the potato famine of 1845. Ireland
suffered horribly from this catastrophe, and all regions that depended upon
the potato as a staple of the diet. Grain famines followed in 1846 and 1847,
causing hardship for many people and mortal danger for some. The
depression of the 1840s multiplied the suffering and political agitation that
grows when food does not.

The revolutions of 1848 began in the homeland of revolution—France. The

constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe had evolved into an alliance of
moderate conservatives and moderate liberals that the premier, François
Guizot, considered ―the golden mean.‖ The French revolution of 1848 did
not immediately fall into the hands of moderates as had the revolution of
1830. Republicans kept control but were soon divided between those who
favored Ledru-Rollin’s democratic program (universal manhood suffrage,
parliamentary government, a cabinet responsible to a majority) and social
radicals who demanded help for workers and the poor. Ledru-Rollin had
more support, so the provisional government concentrated on political
change: It abolished ―all forms of monarchy,‖ all titles of nobility, and laws
restricting political activity. The assembly ultimately adopted a radical
constitution in November 1848 and achieved a few legislative triumphs,
such as the abolition of slavery in French colonies. But it had permanently
alienated one of its strongest constituencies, the working class.

The German revolutions of 1848 centered on three cities: Berlin, Vienna,

and Frankfurt. In Berlin, liberal demonstrations led to the building of
barricades. King Frederick William IV sent the army into the streets and
their brutality made the liberal cause more popular. Within a few days he
abolished censorship, called elections for a new Diet (the United Land-tag),
and promised a liberal constitution.
The liberal victories in Prussia and Austria encouraged German nationalists
to dream of a parallel triumph to unify the German states. The home of
German nationalism during the revolutions of 1848 was the free city of
Frankfurt, the seat of the German Confederation. Revolutionaries in many
states called for a national Parliament to replace the confederation’s Diet,
and elections for the Frankfurt Parliament took place across Germany in
April 1848. More than eight hundred members of this ―parliament of
professors‖ met in Frankfurt. It stripped the nobility of privileges, opening
the bureaucracy and the officer corps to commoners; it abolished the
pillory, branding, and other forms of corporal punishment; it proclaimed
―The Fundamental Rights of the German People,‖ including civil liberties;
and it promised free state education.

A liberal revolution also occurred in Vienna in March 1848. After one day of
fighting between the army and demonstrators, Metternich fled to exile,
leaving the Austrian government in the hands of a feeble-minded emperor,
Ferdinand , and an intimidated group of advisers. After two more days of
demonstrations, Ferdinand promised press freedom, a constitution, and an
Austrian Parliament; he and the royal court then abandoned Vienna to the
liberals. The liberal revolutionaries achieved two lasting successes in
Austria—the abolition of serfdom and the granting of civil rights to Jews,
who were allowed for the first time to live in the cities, enter the
professions, and to marry freely.

The revolutions in the Italian states were expressed by different goals:

bourgeois liberals called for political reform and Italian unification, radicals
wanted a republic, and workers demanded benefits for themselves.

The Conservative Counter revolution, 1849–52

Most of the changes made during the revolutions of 1848 did not survive for
long. Conservatives, typically led by army commanders, went on the
counteroffensive in 1849 and reasserted principles of the Old Regime.
Constitutions and reforms were nullified; royal authority reasserted. The
end of slavery in French colonies, the abolition of serfdom in Germany, and
the emancipation of Jews in Italy remained a legacy of the revolutionary
moment, but few of the government’s and none of the republics of 1848
endured.

The fervor of the counter revolutionaries was expressed by Joseph de

Maistre by saying that, ―The Counter-Revolution will not be a reverse
revolution, but the reverse of a Revolution‖. As a matter of fact the growing
split between the liberals and radicals in 1848 helped the cause of counter
revolution. Most liberals did not want a republican form of government
based on universal manhood suffrage, and very few supported significant
state intervention on behalf of workers.

Ordinary people on the other hand were far more interested in concrete
reforms rather than unrealistic speeches. The high hopes of the
revolutionaries of 1848 were thus disappointed by the reality of different
aims and a split between liberals and radicals. With the lack of consensus
among the revolutionaries, the counter revolutionaries gained the upper
hand in the Hapsburg monarchy, the German states and the Italian states.
The main confusion within the revolutionaries was the lack of unified vision.
For if freedom was the main concern of the revolutionaries, it meant
different things to different people. Nobles for example wanted more
autonomy, while journalists wanted freedom from press censorship,
artisans wanted freedom from the competition of mechanized production,
peasants wanted freedom from labor obligations owed to nobles etc.

CONCLUSION

The Revolutions of 1848 in Germany, Italy, and France present a time of

massive public upheaval. Working and middle class people became united
in an effort to achieve social and political change. This was the first time
Europe had ever seen such widespread revolution. Even though the
motivations of these two classes often differed, in most cases they were
able to work together to achieve immediate successes. By looking at the
commonality between the revolutions in Germany, Italy, and France it is
possible to discover the reasons why the revolutions occurred.

The common starting point for all three of these revolutions was the end of
Napoleon’s French Empire in 1815. It was this event that brought the ideas
of the Enlightenment to the majority of Europe. These Enlightenment ideas
were enough to challenge traditionally held political structure and
convinced many of the ability of people to become successful due to their
talents. In Germany and Italy the removal of the French Empire lead to the
return of the conservative monarchs and the removal of the popular
Enlightenment ideas. The influence of this loss would be felt into 1848 as
many sought a return of the rights associated with the Enlightenment.

Another common phenomenon among the three revolutions was the

widespread hardship brought on by the harvest failures of 1846. No one
was spared from this devastating loss of food. In addition to the loss of
food, the crop failures led to a downward turn in the business cycle that
impacted many of the new businesses that employed the working class.
The effect of these two crises was a working class in need of some sort of
relief. Whereas the elite and middle classes had the wealth and resources
to live in such difficult times the working class had only a subsistence
existence which would not be sufficient for their survival. It is not difficult to
see why in this difficult situation the working class would be willing to
entertain almost any new system that promised relief.

REFERENCES:

 Hobsbawm, Eric J. –Age of Revolutions 1789-1848; London,1996

 Rapport, Mike- 1848: Year of Revolution; great Britain, 2008
 [Link]