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Revolutions of 1848 PDF
Revolutions of 1848 PDF
Origins
The revolutions arose from such a wide
variety of causes that it is difficult to view
them as resulting from a coherent movement
or set of social phenomena. Numerous
changes had been taking place in European
society throughout the first half of the 19th
century. Both liberal reformers and radical
politicians were reshaping national
governments.
Next, the middle classes began to agitate. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, working in Brussels, had written Manifesto of the
Communist Party (published in German in London on February 21, 1848) at the request of the Communist League (an
organization consisting principally of German workers). Following the March insurrection in Berlin, they began agitating in
Germany. They issued their "Demands of the Communist Party in Germany" from Paris in March;[5] the pamphlet urged
unification of Germany, universal suffrage, abolition of feudal duties, and similar middle-class goals.
The middle and working classes thus shared a desire for reform, and agreed on many of the specific aims. Their participations in
the revolutions, however, differed. While much of the impetus came from the middle classes, much of the cannon fodder came
from the lower classes. The revolts first erupted in the cities.
Urban workers
The population in French rural areas had risen rapidly, causing many
peasants to seek a living in the cities. Many in the bourgeoisie feared and
distanced themselves from the working poor. Many unskilled labourers
toiled from 12 to 15 hours per day when they had work, living in squalid,
disease-ridden slums. Traditional artisans felt the pressure of
industrialization, having lost their guilds. Revolutionaries such as Karl
Marx built up a following.[6]
The liberalisation of trade laws and the growth of factories had increased
the gulf among master tradesmen, and journeymen and apprentices, whose
numbers increased disproportionately by 93% from 1815 to 1848 in Galician slaughter (Polish: Rzeź
Germany. Significant proletarian unrest had occurred in Lyon in 1831 and galicyjska) by Jan Lewicki (1795–1871),
1834, and Prague in 1844. Jonathan Sperber has suggested that in the depicting the massacre of Polish nobles
by Polish peasants in Galicia in 1846.
period after 1825, poorer urban workers (particularly day labourers, factory
workers and artisans) saw their purchasing power decline relatively
steeply: urban meat consumption in Belgium, France and Germany stagnated or declined after 1830, despite growing
populations.[7] The economic crisis of 1847 increased urban unemployment: 10,000 Viennese factory workers were made
redundant and 128 Hamburg firms went bankrupt over the course of 1847.[8] With the exception of the Netherlands, there was a
strong correlation among the countries that were most deeply affected by the industrial shock of 1847 and those that underwent a
revolution in 1848.[9]
The situation in the German states was similar. Parts of Prussia were beginning to industrialize. During the decade of the 1840s,
mechanized production in the textile industry brought about inexpensive clothing that undercut the handmade products of
German tailors.[10] Reforms ameliorated the most unpopular features of rural feudalism, but industrial workers remained
dissatisfied with these and pressed for greater change.
Urban workers had no choice but to spend half of their income on food, which consisted mostly of bread and potatoes. As a result
of harvest failures, food prices soared and the demand for manufactured goods decreased, causing an increase in unemployment.
During the revolution, to address the problem of unemployment, workshops were organized for men interested in construction
work. Officials also set up workshops for women when they felt they were excluded. Artisans and unemployed workers destroyed
industrial machines when they threatened to give employers more power over them.[11][12]
Rural areas
Rural population growth had led to food shortages, land pressure, and migration, both within and from Europe, especially to the
Americas. Peasant discontent in the 1840s grew in intensity: peasant occupations of lost communal land increased in many areas:
those convicted of wood theft in the Rhenish Palatinate increased from 100,000 in 1829–30 to 185,000 in 1846–47.[13] In the
years 1845 and 1846, a potato blight caused a subsistence crisis in Northern Europe, and encouraged the raiding of manorial
potato stocks in Silesia in 1847. The effects of the blight were most severely manifested in the Great Irish Famine,[14] but also
caused famine-like conditions in the Scottish Highlands and throughout continental Europe. Harvests of rye in the Rhineland
were 20% of previous levels, while the Czech potato harvest was reduced by a half.[15] These reduced harvests were
accompanied by a steep rise in prices (the cost of wheat more than doubled in France and Habsburg Italy. There were 400 French
food riots during 1846 to 1847, while German socio-economic protests increased from 28 during 1830 to 39, to 103 during 1840
to 1847.[16] Central to long-term peasant grievances were the loss of communal lands, forest restrictions (such as the French
Forest Code of 1827), and remaining feudal structures, notably the robot (labour obligations) that existed among the serfs and
oppressed peasantry of the Habsburg lands.[17]
Aristocratic wealth (and corresponding power) was synonymous with the ownership of farm lands and effective control over the
peasants. Peasant grievances exploded during the revolutionary year of 1848, yet were often disconnected from urban
revolutionary movements: the revolutionary Sándor Petőfi's popular nationalist rhetoric in Budapest did not translate into any
success with the Magyar peasantry, while the Viennese democrat Hans Kudlich reported that his efforts to galvanise the Austrian
peasantry had 'disappeared in the great sea of indifference and phlegm'.[18]
Role of ideas
Despite forceful and often violent efforts of established and reactionary powers to keep them down, disruptive ideas gained
popularity: democracy, liberalism, radicalism, nationalism, and socialism.[19] They demanded a constitution, universal manhood
suffrage, press freedom, freedom of expression and other democratic rights, the establishment of civilian militia, liberation of
peasants, liberalization of the economy, abolition of tariff barriers and the abolition of monarchical power structures in favor of
the establishment of republican states, or at least the restriction of the prince power in the form of constitutional monarchies.
In the language of the 1840s, 'democracy' meant replacing an electorate of property-owners with universal male suffrage.
'Liberalism' fundamentally meant consent of the governed and the restriction of church and state power, republican government,
freedom of the press and the individual. The 1840s had seen the emergence of a number of radical liberal publications such as the
Rheinische Zeitung (1842); Le National and La Réforme (1843) in France; Ignaz Kuranda's Grenzboten (1841) in Austria; Lajos
Kossuth's Pesti Hírlap (1841) in Hungary, as well as the increased popularity of the older Morgenbladet in Norway and the
Aftonbladet in Sweden.[20]
'Nationalism' believed in uniting people bound by (some mix of) common languages, culture, religion, shared history, and of
course immediate geography; there were also irredentist movements. Nationalism had developed a broader appeal during the pre-
1848 period, as seen in the František Palacký's 1836 History of the Czech Nation, which emphasised a national lineage of conflict
with the Germans, or the popular patriotic Liederkranz (song-circles) that were held across Germany: patriotic and belligerent
songs about Schleswig had dominated the Würzburg national song festival in 1845.[21]
'Socialism' in the 1840s was a term without a consensus definition, meaning different things to different people, but was typically
used within a context of more power for workers in a system based on worker ownership of the means of production.
These concepts together - democracy, liberalism, nationalism and socialism, in the sense described above - came to be
encapsulated in the political term radicalism.
Italian states
Although little noticed at the time, the first major outbreak came in Sicily, starting in January 1848. There had been several
previous revolts against Bourbon rule; this one produced an independent state that lasted only 16 months before the Bourbons
came back. During those months, the constitution was quite advanced for its time in liberal democratic terms, as was the proposal
of an Italian confederation of states. The revolt's failure was reversed a dozen years later as the Bourbon kingdom of the Two
Sicilies collapsed in 1860–61 with the Risorgimento.
France
The "February Revolution" in France was sparked by the suppression of the campagne des banquets. This revolution was driven
by nationalist and republican ideals among the French general public, who believed the people should rule themselves. It ended
the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe, and led to the creation of the French Second Republic. This government was
headed by Louis-Napoleon, who in 1852 staged a coup d'état and established himself as a dictatorial emperor of the Second
French Empire.[26]
Alexis de Tocqueville remarked in his Recollections of the period, "society was cut in two:
those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in
common terror."[27]
German states
The "March Revolution" in the German states took place in the south and the west of
Germany, with large popular assemblies and mass demonstrations. Led by well-educated
students and intellectuals,[28] they demanded German national unity, freedom of the press,
and freedom of assembly. The uprisings were not well coordinated, but had in common a
rejection of traditional, autocratic political structures in the 39 independent states of the
German Confederation. The middle-class and working-class components of the
Revolution split, and in the end, the conservative aristocracy defeated it, forcing many
Episode from the Five Days
liberals into exile.[29] of Milan, painting by
Baldassare Verazzi
Denmark
Denmark had been governed by a system of absolute monarchy since the 17th
century. King Christian VIII, a moderate reformer but still an absolutist, died in
January 1848 during a period of rising opposition from farmers and liberals. The
demands for constitutional monarchy, led by the National Liberals, ended with a
popular march to Christiansborg on March 21. The new king, Frederick VII, met
the liberals' demands and installed a new Cabinet that included prominent
leaders of the National Liberal Party.[30] Revolutionaries in Berlin in March
1848, waving the revolutionary flags
The national-liberal movement wanted to abolish absolutism, but retain a
strongly centralized state. The king accepted a new constitution agreeing to share
power with a bicameral parliament called the Rigsdag. It is said that the Danish
king's first words after signing away his absolute power were, "that was nice,
now I can sleep in the mornings".[31] Although army officers were dissatisfied,
they accepted the new arrangement which, in contrast to the rest of Europe, was
not overturned by reactionaries.[30] The liberal constitution did not extend to
Schleswig, leaving the Schleswig-Holstein Question unanswered.
Schleswig
Danish soldiers parade through
Schleswig, a region containing both Danes (a North Germanic population) and Copenhagen in 1849 after victories in
Germans (a West Germanic population), was a part of the Danish monarchy, but the First Schleswig War
remained a duchy separate from the Kingdom of Denmark. Spurred by pan-
German sentiment, the Germans of Schleswig took up arms to protest a new
policy announced by Denmark's National Liberal government, which would have fully integrated the duchy into Denmark.
The German population in Schleswig and Holstein revolted, inspired by the Protestant clergy. The German states sent in an army,
but Danish victories in 1849 led to the Treaty of Berlin (1850) and the London Protocol (1852). They reaffirmed the sovereignty
of the King of Denmark, while prohibiting union with Denmark. The violation of the latter provision led to renewed warfare in
1863 and the Prussian victory in 1864.
Habsburg Empire
From March 1848 through July 1849, the Habsburg Austrian Empire was
threatened by revolutionary movements, which often had a nationalist character.
The empire, ruled from Vienna, included Austrians, Hungarians, Slovenes,
Poles, Czechs, Croats, Slovaks, Ukrainians/Ruthenians, Romanians, Serbs and
Italians, all of whom attempted in the course of the revolution to achieve either
autonomy, independence, or even hegemony over other nationalities. The
nationalist picture was further complicated by the simultaneous events in the
German states, which moved toward greater German national unity.
The revolution grew into a war for independence from the Austrian Empire
when Josip Jelačić, Ban of Croatia, crossed the border to restore Habsburg
control.[35] The new government, led by Lajos Kossuth, was initially successful against the Habsburg forces. Although Hungary
took a national united stand for its freedom, some minorities of the Kingdom of Hungary, including the Serbs of Vojvodina, the
Romanians of Transylvania and some Slovaks of Upper Hungary supported the Habsburg Emperor and fought against the
Hungarian Revolutionary Army. Eventually, after one and a half years of fighting, the revolution was crushed when Russian Tsar
Nicholas I marched into Hungary with over 300,000 troops. Hungary was thus placed under brutal martial law, with the Austrian
government restored. The leading rebels like Kossuth fled into exile or were executed. In the long run, the passive resistance
following the revolution led to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867), which marked the birth of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
Galicia
The center of the Ukrainian national movement was in Galicia, which is today divided between Ukraine and Poland. On April 19,
1848, a group of representatives led by the Greek Catholic clergy launched a petition to the Austrian Emperor. It expressed
wishes that in those regions of Galicia where the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) population represented majority, the Ukrainian language
should be taught at schools and used to announce official decrees for the peasantry; local officials were expected to understand it
and the Ruthenian clergy was to be equalized in their rights with the clergy of all other denominations.[36]
On May 2, 1848, the Supreme Ruthenian (Ukrainian) Council was established. The Council (1848–1851) was headed by the
Greek-Catholic Bishop Gregory Yakhimovich and consisted of 30 permanent members. Its main goal was the administrative
division of Galicia into Western (Polish) and Eastern (Ruthenian/Ukrainian) parts within the borders of the Habsburg Empire, and
formation of a separate region with a political self-governance.[37]
Sweden
During 18–19 March, a series of riots known as the March Unrest (Marsoroligheterna) took place in the Swedish capital of
Stockholm. Declarations with demands of political reform were spread in the city and a crowd were dispersed by the military,
leading to 18 casualties.
Switzerland
Switzerland, already an alliance of republics, also saw an internal struggle. The attempted secession of seven Catholic cantons to
form an alliance known as the Sonderbund ("separate alliance") in 1845 led to a short civil conflict in November 1847 in which
around 100 people were killed. The Sonderbund was decisively defeated by the Protestant cantons, which had a larger
population.[38] A new constitution of 1848 ended the almost-complete independence of the cantons, transforming Switzerland
into a federal state.
Greater Poland
Polish people mounted a military insurrection against the Prussians in the Grand Duchy of Posen (or the Greater Poland region), a
part of Prussia since its annexation in 1815. The Poles tried to establish a Polish political entity, but refused to cooperate with the
Germans and the Jews. The Germans decided they were better off with the status quo, so they assisted the Prussian governments
in recapturing control. In the long-term, the uprising stimulated nationalism among both the Poles and the Germans and brought
civil equality to the Jews.[39]
Romanian Principalities
A Romanian liberal and Romantic nationalist uprising began in June in the principality of Wallachia. The goals of the rebels were
administrative autonomy, the abolition of serfdom, and popular self-determination. It was closely connected with the 1848
unsuccessful revolt in Moldavia, it sought to overturn the administration imposed by Imperial Russian authorities under the
Regulamentul Organic regime, and, through many of its leaders, demanded the abolition of boyar privilege. Led by a group of
young intellectuals and officers in the Wallachian military forces, the movement succeeded in toppling the ruling Prince
Gheorghe Bibescu, whom it replaced with a provisional government and a regency, and in passing a series of major liberal
reforms, first announced in the Proclamation of Islaz. Despite its rapid gains and popular backing, the new administration was
marked by conflicts between the radical wing and more conservative forces, especially over the issue of land reform. Two
successive abortive coups weakened the new government, and its international status was always contested by Russia. After
managing to rally a degree of sympathy from Ottoman political leaders, the Revolution was ultimately isolated by the
intervention of Russian diplomats. In September 1848 by agreement with the Ottomans, Russia invaded and put down the
revolution. According to Vasile Maciu, the failures were attributable in Wallachia to
foreign intervention, in Moldavia to the opposition of the feudalists, and in Transylvania
to the failure of the campaigns of General Józef Bem, and later to Austrian repression.[40]
In later decades the rebels returned and gained their goals.
Belgium
Belgium did not see major unrest in 1848; it had already undergone a liberal reform after
the Revolution of 1830, and thus its constitutional system and its monarchy survived.[41]
A number of small local riots broke out, concentrated in the sillon industriel industrial
region of the provinces of Liège and Hainaut.
Romanian revolutionaries in
Bucharest in 1848, carrying
The most serious threat of revolutionary contagion, however, was posed by Belgian
the Romanian tricolor
émigré groups from France. In 1830 the Belgian Revolution had broken out inspired by
the revolution occurring in France, and Belgian authorities feared that a similar 'copycat'
phenomenon might occur in 1848. Shortly after the revolution in France, Belgian migrant
workers living in Paris were encouraged to return to Belgium to overthrow the monarchy
and establish a republic.[42] Belgian authorities expelled Karl Marx himself from Brussels
in early March on accusations of having used part of his inheritance to arm Belgian
revolutionaries.
Around 6,000 armed émigrés of the "Belgian Legion" attempted to cross the Belgian
frontier. There were two divisions which were formed. The first group, travelling by train, A depiction of Leopold I of
were stopped and quickly disarmed at Quiévrain on 26 March 1848.[43] The second group Belgium's symbolic offer to
resign the crown in 1848
crossed the border on 29 March and headed for Brussels. They were confronted by
Belgian troops at the hamlet of Risquons-Tout and defeated. Several smaller groups
managed to infiltrate Belgium, but the reinforced Belgian border troops were successful and the defeat at Risquons-Tout
effectively ended the revolutionary threat to Belgium.
The situation in Belgium began to recover that summer after a good harvest, and fresh elections returned a strong majority to the
governing party.[42]
Ireland
A tendency common in the revolutionary movements of 1848 was a perception that the liberal monarchies set up in the 1830s,
despite formally being representative parliamentary democracies, were too oligarchical and/or corrupt to respond to the urgent
needs of the people, and were therefore in need of drastic democratic overhaul or, failing that, separatism to build a democratic
state from scratch. This was the process that occurred in Ireland between 1801 and 1848.
Previously a separate kingdom, Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801. Although its population was made up
largely of Catholics, and sociologically of agricultural workers, tensions arose from the political over-representation, in positions
of power, of landowners of Protestant background who were loyal to the United Kingdom. From the 1810s a conservative-liberal
movement led by Daniel O'Connell had sought to secure equal political rights for Catholics within the British political system,
successful in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. But as in other European states, a current inspired by Radicalism criticised the
conservative-liberals for pursuing the aim of democratic equality with excessive compromise and gradualism.
In Ireland a current of nationalist, egalitarian and Radical republicanism, inspired by the French Revolution, had been present
since the 1790s – being expressed initially in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. This tendency grew into a movement for social, cultural
and political reform during the 1830s, and in 1839 was realised into a political association known as Young Ireland. The ideas of
Young Ireland were initially not well received, but grew more popular with the Great Famine of 1845—1849, an event that
brought catastrophic social effects and which threw into light the inadequate response of authorities.
The spark for the Young Irelander Revolution came in 1848 when the British Parliament passed the "Crime and Outrage Bill".
The Bill was essentially a declaration of martial law in Ireland, designed with the deliberate purpose of creating a counter-
insurgency against the growing Irish nationalist movement.[44]
In response, the Young Ireland Party launched its rebellion in July 1848, gathering landlords and tenants to its cause.
But its first major engagement against police, in the village of Ballingarry, South Tipperary, was a failure. A long gunfight with
around fifty armed Royal Irish Constables ended when police reinforcements arrived. After the arrest of the Young Ireland
leaders, the rebellion collapsed, though intermittent fighting continued for the next year,
It is sometimes called the Famine Rebellion (since it took place during the Great Famine).
Spain
While no revolution occurred in Spain in the year 1848, a similar phenomenon occurred. The European revolutions erupted at a
moment when the political regime in Spain was facing great criticism from within one of its two main parties, and by 1854 a
radical-liberal revolution and a conservative-liberal counter-revolution had both occurred.
Since 1833, Spain had been governed by a conservative-liberal parliamentary monarchy similar to and modelled on the July
Monarchy in France. In order to exclude absolute monarchists from government, power had alternated between two liberal
parties: the centre-left Progressive Party, and the centre-right Moderate Party. But a decade of rule by the centre-right Moderates
had recently produced a constitutional reform (1845), prompting fears that the Moderates sought to reach out to Absolutists and
permanently exclude the Progressives. The left-wing of the Progressive Party, which had historical links to Jacobinism and
Radicalism, began to push for root-and-branch reforms to the constitutional monarchy, notably universal male suffrage and
parliamentary sovereignty.
The European Revolutions of 1848 and particularly the French Second Republic prompted the Spanish radical movement to adopt
positions incompatible with the existing constitutional regime, notably republicanism. This ultimately led the Radicals to exit the
Progressive Party to form the Democratic Party in 1849.
Over the next years two revolutions occurred. In 1852 the conservatives of the Moderate Party were ousted after a decade in
power by an alliance of Radicals, Liberals and liberal Conservatives led by Generals Espartero and O'Donnell. In 1854, the more
conservative half of this alliance launched a second revolution to oust the republican Radicals, leading to a new ten-year period of
government by lconservative-liberal monarchists.
Taken together the two revolutions can be thought of as echoing aspects of the French Second Republic: the Spanish Revolution
of 1852, as a revolt by Radicals and Liberals against the oligarchical, conservative-liberal parliamentary monarchy of the 1830s,
mirrored the French Revolution of 1848; while the Spanish Revolution of 1854, as a counter-revolution of conservative-liberals
under a military strongman, had echoes of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup against the French Second Republic.
Russia's relative stability was attributed to the revolutionary groups' inability to communicate with each other.
In some countries, uprisings had already occurred demanding similar reforms to
the Revolutions of 1848, but without much success. This was case for the
Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had seen a series
of uprisings before or after but not during 1848: the November Uprising of
1830–31; the Kraków Uprising of 1846 (notable for being quelled by the anti-
revolutionary Galician slaughter), and later on the January Uprising of 1863–65.
In other countries, the relative calm could be attributed to the fact that they had
already gone through revolutions or civil wars in the preceding years, and Illustration of the "March troubles" in
Stockholm, Sweden in 1848
therefore already enjoyed many of the reforms which Radicals elsewhere were
demanding in 1848. This was largely the case for Belgium (the Belgian
Revolution in 1830–1); Portugal (the Liberal Wars of 1828–34); and Switzerland (the Sonderbund War of 1847)
In yet other countries the absence of unrest was partly due to governments taking action to prevent revolutionary unrest, and pre-
emptively grant some of the reforms demanded by revolutionaries elsewhere. This was notably the case for the Netherlands,
where King William II decided to alter the Dutch constitution to reform elections and voluntarily reduce the power of the
monarchy. The same might be said of Switzerland, where a new constitutional regime was introduced in 1848: the Swiss Federal
Constitution was a revolution of sorts, laying the foundation of Swiss society as it is today.
While no major political upheavals occurred in the Ottoman Empire as such, political unrest did occur in some of its vassal states.
In Serbia, feudalism was abolished and the power of the Serbian prince was reduced with the Turkish Constitution of Serbia in
1838.
In the Isle of Man, there were ongoing efforts to reform the self-elected House of
Keys, but no revolution took place. Some of the reformers were encouraged by Chartist meeting on Kennington
events in France in particular.[47] Common 10 April 1848
In the United States, opinions were polarized, with Democrats and reformers in
favor, although they were distressed at the degree of violence involved. Opposition came from conservative elements, especially
Whigs, southern slaveholders, orthodox Calvinists, and Catholics. About 4000 German exiles arrived and some became fervent
Republicans in the 1850s, such as Carl Schurz. Kossuth toured America and won great applause, but no volunteers or diplomatic
or financial help.[48]
Following rebellions in 1837 and 1838, 1848 in Canada saw the establishment of responsible government in Nova Scotia and The
Canadas, the first such governments in the British Empire outside of Great Britain itself. John Ralston Saul has argued that this
development is tied to the revolutions in Europe, but described the Canadian approach to the revolutionary year of 1848 as
"talking their way...out of the empire's control system and into a new democratic model", a stable democratic system which has
lasted to the present day.[49] Tory and Orange Order in Canada opposition to responsible government came to a head in riots
triggered by the Rebellion Losses Bill in 1849. They succeeded in the burning of the Parliament Buildings in Montreal, but,
unlike their counterrevolutionary counterparts in Europe, they were ultimately unsuccessful.
South America
In Spanish Latin America, the Revolution of 1848 appeared in New Granada, where Colombian students, liberals, and
intellectuals demanded the election of General José Hilario López. He took power in 1849 and launched major reforms,
abolishing slavery and the death penalty, and providing freedom of the press and of religion. The resulting turmoil in Colombia
lasted three decades; from 1851 to 1885, the country was ravaged by four general civil wars and 50 local revolutions.[50]
In Brazil, the "Praieira Revolt," a movement in Pernambuco, lasted from November 1848 to 1852. Unresolved conflicts left over
from the period of the regency and local resistance to the consolidation of the Brazilian Empire that had been proclaimed in 1822
helped to plant the seeds of the revolution.
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[52]
Historian Priscilla Smith Robertson argues that many goals were achieved by the 1870s, but the credit primarily goes to the
enemies of the 1848 revolutionaries:
Most of what the men of 1848 fought for was brought about within a quarter of a century,
and the men who accomplished it were most of them specific enemies of the 1848
movement. Thiers ushered in a third French Republic, Bismarck united Germany, and
Cavour, Italy. Deák won autonomy for Hungary within a dual monarchy; a Russian czar
freed the serfs; and the British manufacturing classes moved toward the freedoms of the
People's Charter.[53]
Democrats looked to 1848 as a democratic revolution, which in the long run ensured liberty, equality, and fraternity. For
nationalists, 1848 was the springtime of hope, when newly emerging nationalities rejected the old multinational empires. But the
end results were not as comprehensive as many had hoped.
Governments after 1848 were forced into managing the public sphere and popular sphere with more effectiveness, resulting in the
increased prominence of the Prussian Zentralstelle für Pressangelegenheiten (Central Press Agency, established 1850), the
Austrian Zensur-und polizeihofstelle, and the French Direction Générale de la Librairie (1856).[64]
Nevertheless, 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 20 years; France retained universal male 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. The revolutions
inspired lasting reform in Denmark, as well as the Netherlands.
Reinhard Rürup has described the 1848 Revolutions as a turning point in the development of modern antisemitism through the
development of conspiracies that presented Jews as representative both of the forces of social revolution (apparently typified in
Joseph Goldmark and Adolf Fischhof of Vienna) and of international capital, as seen in the 1848 report from Eduard von Müller-
Tellering, the Viennese correspondent of Marx's Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which declared: "tyranny comes from money and the
money belongs to the Jews".[65]
About 4000 exiles came to the United States fleeing the reactionary purges. Of these 100 went to the Texas Hill Country as
German Texans.[66] More widely, many disillusioned and persecuted revolutionaries, in particular (though not exclusively) those
from Germany and the Austrian Empire, left their homelands for foreign exile in the New World or in the more liberal European
nations: these emigrants were known as the Forty-Eighters.
Louis Blenker [Germany] Alexander Carl Schurz (Germany) Franz Sigel (Germany)
Schimmelfennig
(Germany)
August Willich Alexander Asboth Lajos Kossuth [Hungary] Albin Francisco Schoepf
(Germany) [Hungary] [Hungary]
In popular culture
Steven Brust and Emma Bull's 1997 epistolary novel Freedom & Necessity is set in England in the aftermath of the Revolutions
of 1848.[67]
See also
Age of Revolution
Arab Spring
Color Revolutions
Protests of 1968
Revolutions of 1830
Revolutions of 1917–23
Revolutions of 1989
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18. Sperber, Jonathan. The European Revolutions of 1848 (1994), pp. 152, 232.
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Bibliography
Surveys
Breunig,Charles (1977), The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789–1850 (ISBN 0-393-09143-0)
Chastain, James, ed. (2005) Encyclopedia of Revolutions of 1848 online from Ohio State U. (http://www.ohio.ed
u/chastain/contents.htm)
Dowe, Dieter, ed. Europe in 1848: Revolution and Reform (Berghahn Books, 2000)
Evans, R.J.W., and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, eds. The Revolutions in Europe, 1848–1849: From Reform
to Reaction (2000), 10 essays by scholars excerpt and text search (https://www.amazon.com/Revolutions-Europe
-1848-1849-Reform-Reaction/dp/0198208405/)
Pouthas, Charles. "The Revolutions of 1848" in J. P. T. Bury, ed. New Cambridge Modern History: The zenith of
European power 1830–70 (1960) pp. 389–415 online excerpts (https://books.google.com/books?id=jRQ9AAAAIA
AJ&pg=PR5&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Langer, William. The Revolutions of 1848 (Harper, 1971), standard overview
Namier, Lewis. 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (Doubleday Anchor Books, 1964), first published by the
British Academy in 1944.
Rapport, Mike (2009), 1848: Year of Revolution ISBN 978-0-465-01436-1 online review (http://www.h-net.org/revi
ews/showrev.php?id=25808), a standard survey
Robertson, Priscilla (1952), Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (ISBN 0-691-00756-X), despite the subtitle this
is a traditional political narrative
Sperber, Jonathan. The European revolutions, 1848–1851 (1994) online edition (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/te
xt/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb01876.0001.001)
Stearns, Peter N. The Revolutions of 1848 (1974). online edition (https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=30508
731)
Weyland, Kurt. "The Diffusion of Revolution: '1848' in Europe and Latin America," International Organization Vol.
63, No. 3 (Summer, 2009) pp. 391–423 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40345942)
France
Duveau, Georges. 1848: The Making of a Revolution (1966)
Fasel, George. "The Wrong Revolution: French Republicanism in 1848," French Historical Studies Vol. 8, No. 4
(Autumn, 1974), pp. 654–77 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/285857)
Loubère, Leo. "The Emergence of the Extreme Left in Lower Languedoc, 1848–1851: Social and Economic
Factors in Politics," American Historical Review (1968), v. 73#4 1019–51 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1
847387)
Italy
Ginsborg, Paul. "Peasants and Revolutionaries in Venice and the Veneto, 1848," Historical Journal, Sep 1974,
Vol. 17 Issue 3, pp. 503–50 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2638387)
Ginsborg, Paul. Daniele Manin and the Venetian Revolution of 1848–49 (1979)
Robertson, Priscilla (1952). Revolutions of 1848: A Social History (1952) pp. 309–401
Other
Feyzioğlu, Hamiyet Sezer et al. "Revolutions of 1848 and the Ottoman Empire," Bulgarian Historical Review,
2009, Vol. 37 Issue 3/4, pp. 196–205
Historiography
Dénes, Iván Zoltán. "Reinterpreting a 'Founding Father': Kossuth Images and Their Contexts, 1848–2009," East
Central Europe, April 2010, Vol. 37 Issue 1, pp. 90–117
Hamerow, Theodore S. "History and the German Revolution of 1848," American Historical Review Vol. 60, No. 1
(Oct., 1954), pp. 27–44 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1842744)
Jones, Peter (1981), The 1848 Revolutions (Seminar Studies in History) (ISBN 0-582-06106-7)
Mattheisen, Donald J. "History as Current Events: Recent Works on the German Revolution of 1848," American
Historical Review, Dec 1983, Vol. 88 Issue 5, pp. 1219–37 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/1904890)
Rothfels, Hans. "1848 – One Hundred Years After," Journal of Modern History, Dec 1948, Vol. 20 Issue 4,
pp. 291–319 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/1871060)
External links
The Revolutions of 1848 begin (http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/1848/revolution_of_1848.html)
Maps of Europe showing the Revolutions of 1848–1849 at omniatlas.com (http://omniatlas.com/maps/europe/184
80224/)
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