Notes from KOT Chapter 22 on
1848 Revolutions
“The Springtime of Peoples”
Context:
Demographic:
· population growth in 19C: 1831 1851
o France 32.5 million 35.8 million
o Germany 26.5 million 33.5 million
o Britain 16.3 million 20.8 million
· urbanization: by mid-century ½ the people of England and ¼ of the people of F and G lived in towns; aided by the boom in railway building in the 1830s-40s
· exception = Eastern Europe, where serfdom continued and restricted movement until
o 1848 in Austria
o 1861 in Russia
o Prussia?
· new problems: slums, sanitation, crime
· Irish potato famine: 1845-47
Social Change:
· proletarianization: “the centry of workers into a wage economy and their gradual loss of significant ownership of the means of production”
o division of labor meant that journeymen could no longer expect to become masters; instead condemned to a life of wage labor
· à Chartism in England
o 1836 William Lovett’s London Working Men’s Association
o Charter calling for universal male suffrage, annual HoC elections, secret ballot, equal electoral districts, no property qualifications for members of the HoC, and salaries to HoC members
o split b/w those who favored violence in order to reach goals, failed to get reforms passed by parliament
· Effects on the family:
o early factories, men would bring their whole families with them as assistants
o later, owners employed single, unskilled women/children b/c cheaper
o Factory Act of 1833 – kids no longer work with families, education no longer the responsibility of parents but rather public education
o family becomes unit of consumption rather than production
o eventually, families are less closely bound together
· food shortages: poor grain/potato harvests across Europe in 1846 (Ireland is just the worst example)
· economic depression: high unemployment
· urban discontent: squalid conditions, overburdened poor relief systems, frustration of artisans
· middle class liberalism: encouraged by repeal of Corn Laws in 1846, wanted more rep. govt., liberties and economic freedoms
· alliance b/w m.c. liberals and the working class, whose methods were often violent
· nationalism (outside France): Germans, Hungarians, Italians, Czechs wanted nation-states of their own
1848 Results
· never in a single year had Europe known so many major uprisings
· fall of French monarchy
· many other thrones badly shaken
· but overall FAILURE! conservatives prevailed, and no genuinely liberal/national states emerged
· m.c. liberals backed away from true w.c. issues of social reform à class consciousness heightened
· m.c. liberals held banquets to criticize the corrupt regime of Louis Philippe and his minister Francois Guizot
· w.c. joined in because of high food prices and unemployment
· February – when the govt. forbade future banquets, workers took to the streets demanding the resignation of Guizot; National Guard refused to fire on demonstrators; LP abdicated and fled to England.
· Collapse of the July Monarchy à Now what?
o mc liberals want political reform, a republican constitution
o wc wants political AND social reform à Louis Blanc made a minister, organized national workshops (like FDR’s WPA, jobs making roads) to provide work and unemployment relief
o women want rights as well à
§ Radicals like the Vesuvians (♀ like pent-up lava bursting forth!) demand full equality b/w men and women, the right for ♀ to serve in the military, and similar dress for both sexes)
§ Conservative feminists formed the Voix des Femmes organization and newspaper to cooperate with male groups (since what helps men helps women, they said) and encourage women’s education (though at the same time affirming the traditional role of motherhood)
· Second Republic – a National Assembly is elected by universal manhood suffrage in April, but since the provinces distrusted the Paris radicals, the new legislature was dominated by conservatives who feared socialism (will our lands be confiscated?)
o closed further admissions to the national workshops (which they considered socialistic)
o June Days: when Paris workers threw up barricades in June, the NA pulled in troops from the conservative countryside to put down demonstrations – 400 killed and thousands arrested
o no social revolution: mc liberals want a state that is safe for private property!
· Louis Napoleon: nephew of the Emperor, voters elected him after June turmoil
o KOT says he “was dedicated to his own fame rather than to republican institutions. He was the first of the modern dictators who, by playing on unstable politics and social insecurity, greatly changed European life.”
o 1851: when the NA refused to change the constitution so he could run for re-election, LN called out troops to disperse the NA and seized personal power. More than 26,000 persons arrested and 10,000 of those who resisted were deported to Algeria!
o But, in a December 1851 plebiscite, 7.5 million voters supported his actions
o in 1852, he declared himself emperor Napoleon III
o feminist movement eradicated: women prohibited from participating in political clubs (like 1793), leaders arrested and exiled (Pauline Roland, Jeanne Deroin)
· Conservative Heaven!
o Metternich
o serfdom
o ethnic divisions: Magyars, Germans, Slavs, Italians, Rumanians, etc.
· Reverberating from overthrow of Louis Philippe in France, the Austrian Empire experiences 1848 problems in Vienna, Hungary, Prague and Italy
· March Revolution:
o 3, 1848 – Louis Kossuth, Hungarian nationalist, calls for Hungarian independence
o 10 days later, students in Vienna lead a series of disturbances
o Metternich resigned and fled
o initially, the feeble emperor Ferdinand promised a liberal constitution, and fearing an uprising in the countryside, emancipated the serfs -- but release of serfs smothered the revolutionary movement in the cities – they had no desire to support calls for further reform
o when student demands escalated, the entire imperial court fled to Innsbruck in May (though unlike France, the monarchy still exists)
· in Hungary, the Diet passed the March Laws
o liberal reforms guaranteeing equality of religion, free press, jury trials, payment of taxes by nobles
o pushed for a partially independent state, where they’d have their own state but Ferdinand would remain the emperor
o policy of Magyarization: Hungarian attempts to annex Transylvania, Croatia, et.al. and impose Hungarian language
o September: Hapsburgs helped the non-Magyar people who resented Hungarian domination resist
o liberalism (Magyars) vs. nationalism (non-Magyars)
· Meanwhile, Czech nationalists demand an independent Slavic state (Bohemia + Moravia) within the empire
o June: led by Francis Palacky, the First Pan-Slavic Congress called for national equality for Slavs within the Hapsburg Empire (at Prague)
o in June, Hapsburgs allied with the Germans who resented pan-slavism to put down Czech nationalism
o vs. both Hungary and the Czechs, Austria played one group of minorities against the other to emerge victorious – classic “divide and rule” strategy
· Finally in Italy, a revolution vs. Hapsburg rule broke out in Piedmont/Sardinia (Milan) in March
o put down (eventually in July) by Austrian commander General Count Joseph Wenzel Radetzky
o disappointed, Italian nationalists pinned hopes of a united state on Pope Pius IX
o but by February 1949 things were moving too slowly for radicals (like Mazzini and Garibaldi) who flocked to Rome declaring a Republic, one of whom assassinated one of the pope’s minsters
o pope fled to France, war resumed vs. Austria, and this time France helped put down Italian rebels (b/c they don’t want a strong unified state on their southern border)
o Italian attempt at unity defeated by Austrian/French forces, Pope Pius IX becomes an archconservative.
· Midsummer reaction:
o imperial government returned to Vienna and crushed a new insurrection that broke out in October with military force
o December, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated to his nephew Francis Joseph
o by March 1849, Austrian forces with help from Russia had imposed military rule over Hungary and repudiated their constitution (c.f. 1848 and 1968, Russians use military force to squelch freedom)
· Revolution in Prussia
o March disturbances erupt in Berlin
o Frederick William IV gave in, called for a Prussian assembly to write a constitution and appointed a new cabinet of moderate liberals
o but in April, the king dissolved the radical/democratic assembly and wrote his own constitution
§ 3-class voting system: divided according to amount of taxes paid:
· highest 5% elect 1/3 of the parliament!
· lasted until 1918!
§ ministry responsible to king alone (not parliament)
§ army swears loyalty directly to monarch
· Frankfurt Parliament
o May 18 meeting to reorganize the German Confederation and write a liberal constitution for a united Germany
o Failure – no liberalism:
§ lost wc support b/c refused to restore guilds
§ marks split b/w mc liberals and wc in Germany
§ when workers protested, the Frankfurt Parliament called out troops to put them down with force
o Failure – no Germany unity:
§ Austria refused to back the idea (too dangerous)
§ so Frankfurt Parl. looked to Prussia for leadership, and offered Fred. Wm. IV of Prussia the crown of a united Germany
§ He refused, saying that kings rule by grace of God, not by permission of constitutions! will not “pick up a crown from the gutter”
§ Frankfurt Parl. dissolved in defeat.