15.1 The Revolution of 1848

In 1848 Europe was swept by a wave of bourgeois-inspired liberal and nationalist revolutions. The Revolution of 1848, as these upheavals are collectively known, marked the end of the Metternich System in Western and Central Europe. Through the revolutions of 1848, the political forces created by the Enlightenment and French Revolution once again challenged the traditions of royal absolutism. While the revolutions would ultimately end with conservative restoration of “law and order,” it was clear that liberalism and nationalism were forces that could only be contained, not destroyed.

The revolutionary movements followed the moderate-radical-conservative “pattern” of the French Revolution. Bourgeois political moderates would seek to establish constitutional governments on the background of which radicals would attempt to swing political developments to the left. Radical extremism would provoke a conservative backlash. While it would begin in France, the revolutionary unrest would take place largely in Central and Eastern Europe. The widespread nature of the Revolution gave rise to speculation among conservatives that it was inspired by an international conspiracy of revolutionary secret societies. It was not. In all cases the revolutions were seemingly spontaneous outbreaks engendered by local circumstances. Because each circumstance was unique and complex, the Revolution of 1848 defies meaningful generalizations. What follows is a very brief overview of what happened in France, the German states, the Austrian Empire, and the Italian states.

The Revolution of 1848 began in Paris. In February the Orléanist-Bourbon monarchy of King Louis Philippe collapsed as a bourgeois revolution ended the monarchy and established a new Constituent Assembly to create a new republican constitution. The 1848 upheaval was accompanied by the outbreak of working class revolutionary violence (the “June Days”) as armed workers took to the streets demanding a socialist republic. Supported by armed middle class civilians, troops loyal to the provisional government of the Constituent Assembly brutally suppressed the insurrection. The “class war” of the June Days resulted in some 10,000 casualties and some 11,000 others arrested and later deported to the colonies. The Constituent Assembly drafted a constitution restoring the republic based on universal male suffrage and giving an elected president strong executive power. The newly elected President of France's Second Republic was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the Emperor Napoleon. In 1852 the French electorate, through a democratic plebiscite, would make their president Emperor Napoleon III.

Revolutionary fervor swept across the German states, resulting not only in demands for constitutional change but also calls for German unification. An assembly meeting in Frankfurt created a plan for the unification of Germany under a constitutional monarchy. When the Prussian king refused to accept a German crown with constitutional limitations, the movement for unification unraveled. In Prussia conservatives working with the crown created a constitutional monarchy (continuing under the Hohenzollern crown) with a parliamentary legislature based on universal male suffrage. The “democratic” nature of the Prussian constitution was deceptive as voting qualifications guaranteed conservative control of the parliament. Prussia would remain safe for autocracy.

In Vienna a bourgeois uprising toppled the government of Metternich and Emperor Ferdinand I was compelled to accept a degree of liberalization of the Habsburg rule. This proved only temporary. Conservative elements, alarmed that Slavic and Hungarian nationalism might tear the Austrian Empire apart, secured the abdication of Ferdinand in favor of his young son Franz-Joseph. Franz-Joseph then sanctioned a program to centralize the crown’s authority across the Empire and to restore royal absolutism. In Hungary a nationalist revolution for independence from Austria was brutally crushed by Austrian forces with Russian assistance.

A republican movement in Rome threatening the sovereignty of the Pope was crushed when Louis Napoleon sent French troops to Rome. (French troops would remain in Rome as protectors of the Pope until 1870.) In the rest of Italy liberal and nationalist revolutionary upheavals inspired by Mazzini's "Young Italy" concept were initially successful but by 1849 had failed. In the Kingdom of Sardinia, however, a bourgeois movement led to the adoption of a constitution under the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel II. This king would have the wisdom to appoint Camillo di Cavour as his prime minister in 1852. Cavour would be the engineer of Italian unification.

Although the revolutions of 1848 failed to undo absolutism, there were some changes of lasting note – largely for peasant populations. Where remnants of feudalism had been undone (in the Austrian Empire and parts of Germany), they were not restored. In effect, the Old Regime was finally dead.

In the more urban and industrialized areas, the revolutionary movement had been largely middle class, and whereas liberalism might have been discredited, the conservative reaction had also included the middle class. As the owners and managers of industrial capital, the bourgeoisie wanted to preserve its investment and property from the threat of social upheaval. The middle class was, therefore, willing to set aside its political aspirations and support monarchy as long as monarchy provided a stable social environment for continued economic development. It would not be long before monarchy would see the wisdom of opening government to moneyed commoners. In Prussia in 1850 and later in Austria parliamentary systems would be created giving the middle class considerable influence in the legislative process. By the 1870s the middle class would have political ascendancy in Western Europe and would be a major factor in directing the political, economic, and social life of all of Europe save where it was small and economically weak, namely Spain, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire.

Nationalism as a factor underlying the revolutions might have been frustrated and suppressed, but this was largely because it was not yet a factor in public consciousness. In 1848 German, Italian, Slavic, and Magyar (Hungarian) nationalism was pretty much limited to intellectual debate and scholarly discussion. Efforts to generate practical movements for unity and independence lacked popular support and failed. Nonetheless, nationalism was not undone by the failure of the revolutions. The Italian and German experiences in 1848 did bring unification to public attention. The presence of French armies in Rome and tighter Austrian control over Lombardy and Venetia – both results of 1848 – galled most Italians. The German Frankfurt Assembly’s intent to make the Prussian king ruler of a united Germany was not lost on the Prussians. Prussia would ultimately unify the German states with enthusiastic popular support from all across Germany, but it would be on Prussia’s terms.

The Revolution of 1848 witnessed the birth of a new revolutionary movement reflecting the interests of the urban industrial working class. Industrialization had increasingly enabled the middle class to dominate the economic life of Europe. The working class, however, was itself an emerging force and demanded greater benefits from the new wealth produced by the spread of industry. In response to the inequities between those who controlled the wealth (the middle class) and those who produced the wealth (the working class), the socialist advocates of the working class called for changes in the distribution of wealth. Among them were two German socialists, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who in early 1848 published The Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto was a relatively short treatise presenting Marx’s idea that an international working class revolution would be the inevitable outcome of the historical process. That revolution, Marx believed, would lead to communism, a classless society wherein the wealth produced by all belonged equally to all. On the background of the Revolution of 1848, The Communist Manifesto would go relatively unnoticed and unread. As history will show, however, this little book would have a profound impact on the future.

The Revolution of 1848 thus marked the emergence of the new forces that would influence Europe's direction for the rest of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Although political liberalism would be temporarily contained, the middle class from then on would dominate Western economic, social, and, ultimately, political life. Suppressed but not eliminated, nationalism would remain both a creative and destructive force motivating nations to unify and compete in war. The dominance of industrial capitalism would, however, be challenged by the expectations of the working class as new forces such as socialism were spawned.

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The illustration of Parisian revolutionaries at the barricades is from Wikipedia.

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Sources for the Revolution of 1848

Brinton, Crane et al. A History of Civilization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960.

Cunliffe, Marcus. The Age of Expansion 1848 –1917. Springfield, MA: Merriam, 1974.

Goubert, Pierre. The Course of French History. New York: Franklin Watts, 1988.

Knapton, Ernest and Thomas Derry. Europe 1815 – 1914. New York: Scribners, 1965.

Langer, Walter et al. Western Civilization. New York : Harper and Row, 1968.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.

Palmer, Robert R. et al A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.