● A result of the agricultural revolution in which people migrated to towns where work was available in new industrial enterprises
● Started in Britain, eventually spreading to northwest of Europe (Belgium, France, Germany and Northern Italy)
● Women, men, and even children now worked in factories instead of at home
○ Conditions weren’t great as behavior was more strict and controlled, hours were longer, environment was unhealthier (disease exposure), and work became more risky and a misery for the working class
● Led to middle class reform demands and development of class consciousness of workers
● Migration to cities limited housing availability and led to smaller accommodations that threatened middle class sensibilities
● Small towns soon transformed into larger and more crowded cities as populations grew
● Resulted in more unsanitary conditions due to the crowdedness of cities
● The working class misery is contrasted with the middle class as the middle class enjoyed political power, leisure time, and prosperity (class split between Third Estate)
● With the defeat of Napoleon, the conflict of the balance of powers no longer wanted to be revisited again by the great powers
○ The cost of materials and men required to defeat Bonaparte made them fear another revolution
● Concert of Europe: the effort of European powers to prevent future conflicts with one another
○ Ex: Britain’s involvement in Greek War of Independence in the 1820s and attacking China in Opium War of 1839
○ Britain refused to take part in the great powers’ desire to institutionalize and participation in the Troppau Protocol
● As Britain and France refused to sign the document, the congresses were no longer called for again
○ This however, did not stop them from backing down on the concert because they wanted to make sure Europe was not destabilized (ex: Belgian Revolution 1830)
● Revolution initiated in Naples, then France, and finally across Europe and the borders of Russia
● Klemens von Metternich – a conservative Austrian statesman who embodied the prerevolutionary order and was forced to be removed from office
○ Created stronghold for Conservative courts
● The Chartist movement in Britain was unsuccessful and left the establishment in charge
● The differences in nationalism and liberalism emerged everywhere but France, where nationalism prevailed over the liberalism that brought revolutionaries into greater conflicts with each other
● French voters elected Louis Napoleon as president of the Second French Republic as he, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, promised to restore old order
● The 1848 revolutions failed because of internal divisions, lack of popular support from outside cities, and the resuming strengths of conservative forces
● Middle class was dismayed by the worsened conditions among the poor and sought to restrain “capitalism”
● Capitalists were required to provide accessible education and lower working hours for women and children
● Socialism shared beliefs that:
○ The existing distribution of wealth was unjust because the advantageous ones had more than enough and the disadvantageous ones had little than enough to survive
○ Human labor profits should be distributed equally
● Utopian Socialism
○ Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Robert Owen were most prominent
○ They advocated for cooperation over competition of communities
■ Their experiments failed
● A philosophy developed by Karl Marx based on class conflict resulting in the elimination of capitalism
● Marxism Socialism
○ Communist Manifesto
○ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels asserted that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.”
○ Best understood through antithesis, thesis, and synthesis
○ 19th century society split into two classes of proletariat workers (antithesis) and bourgeoisie (thesis)
○ Class struggle would lead to dictatorship and all classes would be eliminated meaning there’d be a classless society with no private ownership of the means of production
○ Argued that women were exploited by men and capitalists
○ Predicted overthrow of bourgeoisie for improved working conditions
○ Bernstein refuted class struggle concept and saw the achievement of socialism through gradual reform