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Revolutions of 1848

Series of political upheavals in Europe

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  • 5 chapters
On the barricades on the Rue Soufflot, Paris, 25 June 1848 (1848-49), by Horace Vernet
Horace Vernet · Public domain

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The revolutions varied widely in their aims but generally opposed conservative systems, such as absolute monarchy and feudalism, and sought to establish nation states, founded on constitutionalism and popular sovereignty. The revolutionary wave began with the revolution in Sicily in January and spread across Europe after the revolution in France in February 1848. Over fifty countries were affected, but with no significant coordination or cooperation among their respective revolutionaries. Some of the major political contributing factors were widespread dissatisfaction with political leadership, demands for more participation in government and democracy, for freedom of the press, and by the working class for economic rights, and the rise of nationalism. Other economic factors, such as the European potato failure, triggered mass starvation, migration, and civil unrest.

The uprisings were led by temporary coalitions of workers and reformers, including figures from the middle and upper classes (the bourgeoisie); however, these coalitions did not hold together for long. Many of the revolutions were quickly suppressed, as tens of thousands of people were killed, and even more were forced into exile. Despite this, significant lasting reforms included the abolition of serfdom in Austria and Hungary, the end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, and the introduction of representative democracy in the Netherlands. The revolutions were most prominent in France, Italy, the Austrian Empire, and the states of the German Confederation that would make up the German Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The wave of uprisings ended in October 1849.

Background

The revolutions were shaped by a wide variety of causes, which were linked to the short- and long-term socioeconomic transformations brought about by industrialization and the political legacy of the French Revolution. These included the adoption of modern agricultural practices and subsequent rapid population growth, the intensification of industrialization and urbanization, the repressive political environment established in reaction to the French Revolution, and the spread of ideologies opposed to repressive governments, including liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism. In addition to longer-term trends, an acute economic crisis between 1845 and 1847, resulting from the combination of a food crisis and an industrial recession, led to significant civil unrest and revolutionary agitation. The failure of governments to adequately address popular demands for reform led to an accumulation of discontent across Europe, culminating in the simultaneous outbreak of revolutions across the continent in 1848.

Social discontent and conflict

In rural areas

According to Jonathan Sperber, conflict over agricultural land rights was the most prevalent form of social conflict in the pre-revolutionary period. The abolition of feudalism in parts of Western and Central Europe (especially in France) in the wake of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had major ramifications for the rural populace. Customary rights that peasants had once held on common land, especially to acquire wood from communal forests, were increasingly lost with the enclosure and privatization of the commons. These processes were often aided by modernizing states, such as France, which, with the enactment of the Forest Code of 1827, legally abolished peasants' rights to forests and the wood within them.

Peasants resorted to both legal and violent means to reclaim their land rights. Lawsuits were frequently filed by peasants against landowners, and could remain active for decades; one such lawsuit in Sicily was first brought in 1829 and not settled until 1896. Peasants also stole wood from privatized forests or occupied them to reassert their land rights by force. Wood theft in particular was widespread in parts of Germany. Between the 1820s and 1840s, the number of those convicted of wood theft in the Bavarian Palatinate increased from 37,500 in 1821–22 to 185,000 in 1846–47, accounting for a third of the population. In France, opposition to the Forest Code led to the "War of the Maidens" from 1829 to 1832, in which peasants disguised in women's clothes violently resisted the Code's implementation in the department of Ariège.

Unrest among the peasantry was also widespread in regions that retained feudalism, as in parts of Central Europe and most of Eastern Europe, though this had been commonplace for several centuries. Disputes and revolts were directed variously at oppressive lords, taxation and military conscription by the state, and religious authorities. The largest pre-revolutionary peasant uprising against feudal lords occurred in Austrian Galicia in 1846, which put an end to the Kraków Uprising by the Polish nobility.

Among urban workers

Rapid population growth was the most serious issue affecting urban workers, as migration into the cities due to poor conditions in the countryside led to a major oversaturation of labour markets and a decline in real wages among workers, while the cost of living continued to increase. Poor workers became more vulnerable to economic shocks, and the inability to afford foodstuffs other than potatoes and bread proved catastrophic amid a major food crisis affecting both between 1845 and 1847. Industrialization and the transition from the traditional economy to capitalist production also negatively affected urban workers, leading to a decline in their standard of living and social status. Most workers in 1848 were artisans who worked in the trades, while there were relatively few factory workers. Mechanization threatened some trades, such as the textile industry and metalworking, leading to a growing sense of insecurity among artisans, who felt their livelihoods and economic agency threatened.

The most prevalent disputes, however, were between employers and workers. Master craftsmen and journeymen came into increasing conflict as the guild system was weakened across Europe in the early nineteenth century. Under the new economy, master craftsmen began to accumulate wealth and were able to hire more workers, many of whom were unemployed due to the massive surplus of artisans. At the same time, masters sought to prevent the growing number of journeymen and apprentices from ever advancing to become masters to protect their economic interests from growing competition.

Both master craftsmen and journeymen were threatened by economic transformations within the proto-industrial putting-out system, in which self-employed artisans were contracted by capitalist merchants to manufacture finished products. Conflict between merchants and artisans, especially in the textile industry, was primarily over payment disputes, as merchants frequently underpaid outworkers for their finished products to maximize profit. These disputes led to civil unrest, including uprisings by weavers in Lyon in 1831 and 1834, and in Silesia in 1844. Deep frustration among artisans continued into 1848, as they demanded the right of association to reclaim economic agency lost during the transition. This was advocated for both in novel forms such as the establishment of cooperatives, mutual benefit societies, and early trade unions, as in France, or through a return to the traditional guild system, as in Germany.

Among the educated

The educated middle class was also affected by a decline in living standards. Across Western Europe, industrialization had increased the demand for professionals to support the new industries. Societal expectations also began to favor education and careerism as means to achieve upward mobility, especially after the French Revolution. As a result, more young men across Europe enrolled in universities, expecting, according to Lenore O'Boyle, that "the diploma might do what a title of nobility had once done" and they would achieve positions of leadership in society. In the more industrialized economies of Britain and the United States, more educated men were able to find work in private businesses, and consequently, there was little to no revolutionary agitation among them in 1848. In mainland Europe, however, where the pace of industrialization lagged, the only available professional careers were in the civil service, which could not open enough positions to meet demand.

The lack of work led to dissatisfaction among the educated, who felt that they were unable to live as their status demanded. This issue was most pronounced in Germany, where overcrowding in professional careers was so severe that it gave rise to what sociologist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl termed an "intellectual proletariat" of "underpaid and aspiring lower civil servants, journalists, and schoolteachers". The intellectual proletariat was so numerous in Germany that, according to Riehl, they, not manual labourers, comprised "the real proletariat". Apart from the overcrowding of the professions, the middle class was also often deliberately excluded from political life and the bureaucracy by the state. Positions in the bureaucracy were restricted to those who could afford the education required for them, and, especially in France and the Austrian Empire, aristocrats remained influential, hindering career advancement. Professionals who could not find work turned to journalism as "the last refuge of those who had failed in other middle-class or professional careers", and were able to channel their frustration into political agitation, eventually becoming leaders in the revolutions in 1848.

Revolutionary politics

Ideology

New political ideologies were emerging in the 1840s that would go on to influence the revolutions in 1848, with liberalism, radicalism, and nationalism being the principal opposition movements to European governments.

Liberals formed a distinct political force in the 19th century but varied widely in their beliefs. Generally, liberals supported equality before the law and the protection of civil liberties, such as the freedoms of speech, the press, association, religion, and especially to own property, and favoured constitutions to achieve such. They opposed both absolute monarchies and radical republics, which they viewed as equally despotic, and favoured constitutional monarchies as a balance between the two extremes. They favoured popular sovereignty, but made a distinction between "the people" and "the rabble". To that end, liberalism generally sought a restriction of the franchise to male property-owners. Liberals were reluctant to engage in revolution or seek popular support due to their fears of a radical takeover and violent mob rule, as they had experienced during the French Revolution under the Jacobins and the Reign of Terror. Liberals saw gradual, political reforms and economic development through parliaments, free markets, industrialization, and public education as means by which societal equality could be achieved, as more men could become property-owners and enter into political life. When liberals gained power, as in the July Monarchy in France after 1830, they trended toward conservatism, and their restriction of political life alienated wide swaths of the population, bringing them into conflict with the radical left.

Radicalism generally represented the loose and ill-defined coalition of democrats and socialists. Radicals differed from moderate liberals in their support for democracy and universal manhood suffrage, extending the franchise to all adult men. Both liberals and radicals shared in their opposition to "backwards" institutions, and especially in their anti-clericalism, which was considered synonymous with liberal and left-wing thought, though radicals were notably more violent in their opposition. While liberals were generally more concerned with political and legal questions and sought the expansion of civil liberties, radicals placed greater weight on the "social question", or the question of how to address the growth and precarity of the working poor in the capitalist economy. Radicals were divided as to how to address the social question; radical democrats generally sought to address the social question through regulation and state intervention, whereas socialists sought the abolition of capitalism and economic redistribution. Some radical democrats were economic liberals who tended to support political reform, especially universal manhood suffrage, over economic reform, and did not support government intervention of any sort. Both democrats and socialists were, however, united in their desire to overthrow the existing regimes through revolution.

"Nationalism" promoted the unity and primacy of people bound by some mix of common language, culture, religion, shared history and destiny, and 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 emphasized 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.

Expression and participation

Political participation was increasing in the pre-revolutionary period, though it was limited in scope, and what forms existed were heavily restricted by state authorities. Where elections were held, very few people could vote or run for office due to strict property requirements; in France, for example, the franchise was open to 0.5 percent of the population, or 241,000 people out of a population of 26 million.

Outside of elections, the reading, writing, and publishing of newspapers was the most basic form of political participation and expression, and the means by which political awareness as a whole was expanding. Papers such as the Rheinische Zeitung in Germany and La Réforme in France became outlets for oppositional thought. Circulation was generally low, ranging from several thousand for regional papers to hundreds for town and city papers. However, newspapers were often available to read communally or were read aloud to large public gatherings for those who were illiterate, allowing for a wider dissemination of political thought. Mass politics was carried out through public celebrations, such as festivals and banquets, which were organized as de facto political rallies to circumvent state restrictions on them.

Informal political organizations existed to a degree in informal social circles, such as reading clubs, coffeehouses, and Masonic lodges. Formal political parties and organizations were largely banned, leading the editorial staffs of newspapers to also became leaders of the political opposition. What formal organizations did exist were in the form of illegal secret societies, many of which attempted to organize unsuccessful uprisings in the pre-revolutionary period. Among the most famous was the Young Italy movement, part of the larger Young Europe international network led by Giuseppe Mazzini, whose activism and methods in political organization were widely admired by contemporaries and imitated by other revolutionaries.

Economic crisis

According to economic historians Helge Berger and Mark Spoerer, the most immediate cause of the revolutions of 1848 was the multitudinous economic crisis between 1845 and 1847. The crisis began with a major food crisis in Europe in 1845. Phytophthora infestans, the microorganism responsible for potato blight, arrived in Europe from North America around 1840 and spread rapidly during a period of unusually wet weather in 1845, devastating harvests across Northern Europe. Potatoes had become a staple food due to their high nutritional value and affordability, and were being grown on a large scale to feed growing populations, especially in Northern Europe. The effects of the potato blight were most severe in Ireland, where the Great Famine directly killed over an eighth of the population, or over 1 million people out of a population of 8 million. Other countries, including Scotland, Belgium, and the Netherlands saw similar damage to crops, with 60,000 deaths in the Netherlands due to the potato blight. Drought conditions in 1846 stopped the spread of the potato blight but damaged grain harvests, resulting in a sharp increase in food prices across the continent, and consequently virtually all foodstuffs became unaffordable for the poor. Food riots erupted across Europe as the poor attempted by force to stave off starvation, with over 400 such riots in France between 1846 and 1847 and 164 riots in the German states in 1847.

Although severe famine was averted in most countries through strong government intervention, the rising cost of food, coupled with poor cotton harvests from the Southern United States necessary for textile manufacture, led to a major industrial recession in 1847. Unemployment and pauperism spread rampantly among urban communities: according to Christopher Clark, by 1847 a fifth of the population in Friesland in the Netherlands were receiving relief from the state, or 47,482 out of 245,000 people; and in the same period, "the number of residents officially classified as poor in German towns could swell to two thirds or even three fourths of the population". Berger and Spoerer found 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.

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