Critically discuss the causes of the revolutions of 1848. Why did they fail?

The revolutions of 1848 were a series of political upheavals throughout the European continent. Described by some historians as a revolutionary wav, the period of unrest began in France and soon spread to the rest of Europe. The origins of the 1848 revolutions are best understood in terms of the coming together of longer- and shorter-term socio-economic and political causes. A basic precondition for the revolution was the gradual decline in popular standards of living over the past twentyfive years. This trend was a reflection of the decline of an agrarian-artisan economy and its replacement by a more efficient one, characterized by a more productive agriculture, an improved market network and a growing industrial sector. In central and eastern Europe these structural changes were accompanied by changes in property relationsespecially serfdom and guild system- that hindered the growth of a market economy and society. While historians might understand these changes as part of a favourable transition leading to increased economic growth and higher standards of living, contemporaries, however, had no way of knowing that their troubles were transitional. Hence, there prevailed widespread discontent. Some historians consider the economic crisis of 1845-47 as the precondition of the revolutions of 1848. Since 1845 large parts of Europe had suffered because of failure of potato crop, which was the main food of the poor people, and also due to bad cereal harvest in 1846. The growing expense of food inevitably reduced the demand for manufactured goods and it also meant a serious growth of industrial unemployment. In this way the events of 184547 constituted an economic crisis of the typical old regime type. Another reason for the severity of economic crisis was related to credit. The harvest failures of 1845-46 were followed by the recession of 1847. Those already suffering from the gradual decline in their real incomes, the years of high food crisis meant taking on a heavy burden of debt. Unemployment and falling price levels, caused by the recession and the rich harvest of 1847-50, made debt difficult to pay off. The financial system collapsed producing a wave of bankruptcies. This resulted in a chronic state of dissatisfaction which formed a background to the initial uprisings of the spring of 1848. The social repercussions of these economic strains can be seen in the increase in food riots and other disturbances and these helped to generate prolonged social struggles in the great European states. However, by the beginning of 1848 the worst of the economic crisis was over and there was a marked recovery of industrial production and employment. The revolutions therefore took place against the background of improving economic conditions, a fact which blunted social antagonism and strengthened conservative forces almost everywhere.

Although the economic situation in 1845-47 can be said to have played an important part in bringing about the revolution, there is no clear correlation either in time or space between extreme economic suffering and revolutionary political activity. The areas which suffered worst after the economic crisis of 1845-47 were not necessarily those in which the revolutionary action and ideals were strongest in 1848. In the Dutch provinces for example, a working class, largely depended on the potato crop, suffered greatly from 1845 onwards. In some areas the number of people receiving poor relief grew by 50% during this period. Yet all this produced no significant revolution in this region. In Belgium which was most industrialized part of the continent, 87% of the potato crop had been lost in 1845 and the price of bread had trebled in the following year. But there was no revolution in Belgium either. Again, in the French textile centre of Roubaix half the population w as living on public charity in early 1848. Yet there was no serious attempt at revolutionary action. The revolutions can thus hardly be explained solely in simple economic terms. According to some historians, the discontent was essentially political in nature. Sperber refers to two long-term political causes of the mid-19th century revolutions. One was the increasing demands that all European states placed on their inhabitants like raising taxes, recruiting and garrisoning of soldiers, or closely regulating use of the forest. Besides, declining standards of living meant that the authorities were trying to pump resources out of a population that was hard hit. Also, as a result of the great territorial shakeup begun with the French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, many monarchs ruled over new subjects, unfamiliar with their rulers, lacking ties of dynastic and religious loyalty. Such subjects would resent their new overlords in any event, all the more if these new rulers made additional demands on them. Ironically, the more demands that states placed on their subjects, the less means they had to enforce them because of lack of administrative personnel which included police and tax collectors. The second long-term political cause of the revolution was the gradual development of oppositional politics or, as contemporaries might have said, the growing strength of the party of movement, in most European states. The members of the party of movement advocated the granting of basic civil rights, an end to privilege and the realization of equality before the law, and the creation of representative institutions and they believed that all these measures required the framework of a nation. A constitution, popular sovereignty etc were the key demands of oppositional politics. Thus, the combination of a growing, politicized opposition with an increasing political popular discontent was hardly a positive development for the existing European regimes. Jacques Droz states that political and national factors, as a driving force behind the uprisings, were not the same in all countries. They differed according to the degree of economic maturity and the social structure of the countries under consideration. Thus the causes of the uprisings of 1848 could not be the same in France, where the bourgeoisie

had long since carried out its revolution and wielded real power, and in the countries of central Europe where the ancient regime had only been partially abolished and where the old ruling classes were still in control of the government. In France, the main cause of the Revolution was the isolation of the upper bourgeoisie which had completely identified itself with the regime especially in 1830. All political power and prerogatives in fact the whole government had come under their influence. They dominated domestic and as well as foreign policies. However, by 1848 the grande bourgeoisie found itself an object of suspicion vis--vis the petite bourgeoisie which felt the former had become a monopolistic class. The influence of socialist writings which stressed the dangers to working class interests became widespread among the proletariat. Thus, in France the revolution was directed against the grande bourgeoisie in 1848. In Germany where industrialization had not been so extensive the old ruling classes still retained a dominant influence while the middle class had to struggle for its place in the sun. Therefore, the 1848 revolution in Germany was an attempt by the upper bourgeoisie, especially the Rhenish middle class, to obtain political power which, since the creation of the Economic Union called the Zollverein, its economic situation conferred upon it. However, in Germany the middle class was prepared to reach a compromise with the ruling class, and its object in 1848 was a division of power rather than the seizure of power. In a country like Hungary where national feeling was particularly strong but where the middle class was very weak, revolution was led by a section of the liberal nobility which called for the abolition of an outdated economic system based on feudalism and serfdom. Even in those countries lacking barricade building and fighting in the streets, 1848 was a year of political mass movements. The Dutch king hastily granted a constitution to ward off the revolutionary tide. In case of Belgium, like France, where a constitutional regime existed, there was opposition against the policy that limited suffrage to the affluent. The regime survived by means of political maneuvering and well-timed repression. The question the historians invariably ask about the 1848 revolutions is why were the revolutions a failure despite initial victories and why the revolutionaries so unsuccessful in creating a new regime. The weakness at the deepest level was a social one. Except to some extent in Paris, the leadership, programmes and objectives were completely middle class. Written constitutions, guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press, parliamentary governments, representative bodies, elected on a widened franchise etc were the typical demands of the middle class revolutionaries. But to artisans and peasants, struggling with more immediate problem of low wages, land hunger, or unemployment, such ambitions meant much less. Perhaps the best example of the middle class character of the revolution and its leadership is the Frankfurt Parliament in Germany. Of the 600 members all except a few were

professionals or intellectuals - for example 106 professors, 223 lawyers, 118 officials, 16 army officials, and only one peasant from Silesia. Thus, the assembly was not the representative of the German people as a whole. Although it would be a mistake to put to much weight on figures of this kind, nonetheless no 19th century representative body reflected directly in its composition that of the society it claimed to represent. The social background and above all the attitudes of many of the revolutionaries of 1848 destroyed any chance they had of arousing true mass support. For example, in France the revolution was not the work of the peasants and they did little for improving their lot. In the Hapsburg Empire the manifesto of 11 th April which promised the peasants freedom from all surviving feudal services and dues in fact decreased his interest in the revolutionary movement and he now began to wish merely for reestablishment of law and order. Nowhere the peasants played an active role in 1848. The social limitations of the movements of the year 1848 thus revealed the role of intellectuals and students. In Vienna, Berlin and other German states the students led the revolution. This lack of mass social backing for the revolutionaries as well as absence of any worthwhile social and economic program contributed to their ultimate failure. The revolutionaries concentration on constitutional issues were characteristic of European liberalism before 1848 and it meant that in that year the liberals were unable and unwilling to bid for mass support by adopting radical economic and social policies. This is again seen most clearly in Germany. The economic program of the Frankfurt liberals in so far as they had won was based on liberty of the classical individualistic kind that is freedom of trade, of enterprise etc. However, this attitude was unacceptable to most German workers who thought in traditional guild terms and were organized in traditional workshop basis. They denounced freedom of enterprise and demanded government action to maintain protective guild restrictions. Thus there were not merely differences but a head-on collision between economic ideas of the Frankfurt liberals and those of the ordinary urban workers. In other German states and also in southern Italy, 1848 saw the emergence of widespread peasant discontent centered on demands of land redistribution which imbalanced liberal leadership of the revolution. This weakness of the revolutionaries was realized by reactionary governments and they could suppress their revolutions with ease and restore Austrian rule in Lombardy and Venetia. Thus almost everywhere the revolutions suffered from the narrowness of their social base. The hopes of 1848 were dashed by other factors as well. The revolutionaries suffered from their own lack of unity of leadership and objectives which made the task of reactionary governments easy to suppress the revolts and helped the old regimes in retaining the loyalty of the armies. Hence, it is not surprising that the recently toppled pillars of conservatism were propped back into their old places.