Revolutions of 1848

Also called: Revolution of the liberals · Topic: The Rise of Nationalism in Europe · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 1 "The Rise of Nationalism in Europe"

Meaning

The Revolutions of 1848 were a wave of uprisings across Europe in 1848. Two kinds of revolt ran side by side:

• Hunger revolts. The poor rose up because of food shortages and unemployment.
• The revolution of the liberals. The educated middle classes demanded constitutions, press freedom and nation-states. This happened in Germany, Italy, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In France the revolt ended the monarchy and set up a Republic. It gave the vote to all adult males above 21.

Why it matters: 1848 is the turning point in the NCERT story of European nationalism. The liberal-democratic path to a nation failed. Later, conservative rulers delivered many of the same goals from above.

Explanation

Background and causes: why Europe was hungry

• Too many people, too few jobs. Europe's population grew fast in the first half of the 19th century, but jobs did not.
• People from villages moved to towns and ended up in overcrowded slums.

• There were more job-seekers than jobs, so unemployment spread.

• Machines ruined hand workers.

• Cheap machine-made English textile imports flooded European markets.

• Town workers who made cloth by hand could not match the price, so they lost their living.

• Peasants were squeezed. Where the aristocracy still ruled the land, peasants paid feudal dues (forced payments and labour owed to the lord).

• Bad harvests pushed food prices up. The result was pauperism (large-scale, lasting poverty).
• An early warning: the Silesian weavers' revolt (1845).
• Contractors gave the weavers raw material and paid them a piece rate for finished cloth. Then they cut the payments sharply.
• The weavers broke into a contractor's mansion. They smashed his windows, furniture and china, and destroyed his stocks and account books.
• The contractor came back with the army, and eleven weavers were shot dead.

Strand one: the hunger revolt in Paris (February–June 1848)

• The trigger. The government banned a big reform banquet planned for 22 February 1848. Crowds gathered and clashed with police. About 40 demonstrators died when troops fired outside the residence of the minister Guizot [3].
• Barricades. Food shortage and unemployment brought the people of Paris onto the streets, and they put up barricades (street blockades).
• The king fell. Louis Philippe abdicated on 24 February 1848. He escaped with his wife to England, where he died in 1850 [3].
• The Republic. A National Assembly proclaimed a Republic and promised:
• suffrage (the right to vote) for all adult males above 21
• a guaranteed right to work

• national workshops (ateliers nationaux), which were state-run workshops that gave jobless people paid work.

• Extension (not in NCERT): the socialist Louis Blanc, a member of the provisional government, pushed for the workshops and for shorter working hours [3]. The assembly later shut the workshops down. This set off the June Days (23–26 June 1848), a short, bloody fight in Paris between the sacked workers and the army [3].

Strand two: the liberals' revolution and the Frankfurt parliament

• Who they were. Lawyers, teachers, traders and businessmen. They were men of property and learning, not workers.
• What they wanted. Two demands joined together:
• Constitutionalism: a written constitution, freedom of the press and freedom of association.

• National unification: one nation made out of many small states.

• The Frankfurt parliament.

• Political associations across the German regions organised elections to an all-German National Assembly.
• On 18 May 1848, 831 elected deputies marched in a festive procession and took their seats in the Church of St Paul, Frankfurt.
• They drafted a constitution for a German nation, to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament (the king rules, but under the elected house).
• The crown was offered to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, and he rejected it.

• Extension (not in NCERT): the constitution was adopted on 28 March 1849, and the crown was offered on 3 April 1849 [2]. He refused because, as a conservative, he would accept a crown only from the German princes, not from an elected assembly. He also disliked how limited its power was [2]. After this, Prussia and Austria withdrew their support [2].

• Why it failed from inside:

• The parliament was dominated by the middle classes.
• It resisted the demands of workers and artisans, who wanted food, work and better wages.
• So it lost their support, and these were the crowds that had made the revolution possible.

• With no popular base left, it was finally disbanded by troops.

• Women: present, but not counted.

• Women formed political associations, started newspapers, and joined meetings and demonstrations.
• Yet they were denied the vote in the assembly elections.
• At the Church of St Paul they were admitted only as observers in the visitors' gallery.

Results: the conservatives won but had to change

• Monarchs crushed the 1848 revolts. But they saw that the old order could no longer be held by force alone.
• So they granted some of the demands themselves:
• Serfdom and bonded labour were abolished in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia.

• The Habsburg rulers gave the Hungarians more autonomy in 1867.

• In short: 1848 failed politically but succeeded socially. Conservative rulers later delivered many of its demands from above.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: the 1830s–40s crisis, the 1845 Silesian revolt, the revolutions of 1848, and the debates of 1849–50. It sits within the age of nationalism, 1789–1914.
• Places:
• Silesia: the weavers' revolt, 1845.
• Paris: the February barricades and the June Days.
• Frankfurt (Church of St Paul): the all-German parliament.

• Liberal revolts also broke out in Germany, Italy, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

• Key people:

• Louis Philippe: the French king who abdicated in 1848.
• Guizot: the minister outside whose residence demonstrators were shot.
• Louis Blanc: the socialist who pushed for the national workshops [3].
• Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia: refused the German crown.
• Carl Welcker: a liberal deputy who opposed votes for women.

• Louise Otto-Peters (1819–95): founded a feminist political association and a women's journal.

• How we know:

• Wilhelm Wolff, a journalist, wrote an eyewitness report of the Silesian weavers' revolt.
• Welcker's argument in the parliament debates: nature made men and women for "different functions", men for public life and women for the home.
• Louise Otto-Peters' writing of 1849: "Liberty is indivisible!"
• A letter from an anonymous reader (1850): "the stupidest cattle-herder possesses the right to vote, simply because he is a man", while educated women had no vote.

Don't confuse with

• July Revolution of 1830 (France): this revolution brought Louis Philippe to power as a constitutional monarch. The February Revolution of 1848 drove him out and made France a Republic.
• Silesian weavers' revolt (1845): an earlier, local hunger revolt in which eleven weavers were shot. It was a forerunner of 1848, not part of the 1848 wave.
• Frankfurt parliament vs Congress of Vienna (1815): the Frankfurt parliament (1848) was an elected body of 831 deputies trying to unite Germany from below. The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of conservative powers that restored monarchies after Napoleon.
• Frankfurt parliament vs German unification (1871): Frankfurt tried to unite Germany through a liberal assembly and failed. Germany was actually united later by Prussian state power under Bismarck, from above.

Prelims Hooks

• Silesian weavers' revolt: 1845. The eyewitness reporter was Wilhelm Wolff, and eleven weavers were shot.
• Louis Philippe abdicated on 24 February 1848 after barricades went up in Paris [3]. The Republic that followed gave suffrage to all adult males above 21, the right to work, and national workshops.
• Frankfurt parliament: met on 18 May 1848 with 831 deputies in the Church of St Paul. It proposed a monarchy subject to parliament. Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia refused the crown, offered on 3 April 1849 [2].
• "Liberty is indivisible!" was written by Louise Otto-Peters in 1849. Trap: Carl Welcker took the opposite side ("different functions"). Women sat only in the visitors' gallery.
• After 1848: serfdom and bonded labour were abolished in the Habsburg dominions and Russia, and Hungarians got more autonomy in 1867.
• Chronological order: Silesian revolt (1845) → February Revolution in Paris (1848) → Frankfurt parliament opens (18 May 1848) → June Days (23–26 June 1848) [3] → crown refused (April 1849) [2].

Mains Points

• Two revolutions that pulled apart.
• The hunger revolt of workers, artisans and peasants wanted bread and work.
• The liberal revolution of the middle classes wanted a constitution and a nation.
• When the Frankfurt parliament ignored workers' economic demands, the alliance broke. Once the street withdrew, troops dispersed the assembly.

• So nationalism in 1848 failed largely because of its narrow social base.

• The liberals failed, but their agenda won.

• Friedrich Wilhelm IV's refusal of the crown showed that unification would not come from an elected assembly [2].
• German unity later came from above, through Prussia under Bismarck. Conservatives also granted the social demands: the end of serfdom and Hungarian autonomy in 1867.

• After 1848, nationalism shifted from a liberal-democratic force to a conservative, state-led one.

• Hunger, rights and the limits of liberalism.

• Population growth, machine imports, feudal dues and bad harvests caused pauperism. This links the Industrial Revolution to the political map of Europe.
• The liberals called votes for "all adult males above 21" universal. Otto-Peters' "Liberty is indivisible!" exposes the limits of that claim. This is useful for GS-I answers on women's movements and on 19th-century liberalism.

Related concepts

• Silesian weavers' revolt
• Frankfurt Parliament

Read more

• 1848: hunger revolts and the revolution of the liberals