1848: hunger revolts and the revolution of the liberals

Detail

Why people were hungry: the 1830s-40s backdrop

• Too many people, too few jobs. Population in Europe grew fast in the first half of the 19th century. Jobs did not grow with it.
• Village people moved to towns looking for work. They ended up in overcrowded slums.

• More job-seekers than jobs meant unemployment everywhere.

• Small producers were crushed by machine goods. Town workers in Europe made cloth by hand for a small market.

• Cheap machine-made English textile imports flooded in and undercut them.

• Hand producers could not match the price, so they lost their living.

• The countryside was squeezed too. In parts of Europe where the aristocracy still ruled the land, peasants still paid feudal dues (forced payments and labour owed to the lord).

• Bad harvests pushed food prices up. The result was pauperism — large-scale, permanent poverty. This is the fuel behind the 1848 revolts.

The Silesian weavers' revolt, 1845

• The Silesian weavers worked for contractors who supplied raw material, gave out orders for finished cloth, and paid a piece rate.
• The contractors cut the payments sharply. Weavers who could not live on the new rate went in a crowd to the contractor's mansion.
• They broke in and sacked the house — smashed windows, furniture, china, and destroyed his stocks and account books.
• The contractor fled, then came back with the army. In the clash eleven weavers were shot dead.
• The event is known to us through the eyewitness report of the journalist Wilhelm Wolff. Exam point: Wolff = the reporter, Silesia = the place, 1845 = the year, eleven = the dead.

February 1848, Paris: the hunger revolt becomes a republic

• Food shortage and widespread unemployment brought the Paris population onto the streets in February 1848. They put up barricades in the city.
• Louis Philippe was forced to flee. He abdicated on 24 February 1848 and escaped with his wife to England, where he died in 1850 [3].

• The trigger was the government banning a big reform banquet planned for 22 February 1848; crowds gathered, clashed with police, and about 40 demonstrators died in a volley fired outside the minister Guizot's residence [3].

• A National Assembly proclaimed a Republic. Its promises:

• Suffrage (the right to vote) for all adult males above 21.
• A guaranteed right to work.

• National workshops (in French, ateliers nationaux) — state-run workshops to give the jobless paid work.

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

The liberals' parallel revolution

• At the same time as the food riots, the educated middle classes ran their own revolution — in Germany, Italy, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
• Their demand joined two things:
• Constitutionalism — a written constitution, freedom of the press, freedom of association.

• National unification — one nation out of many small states.

• These were men of property and learning — lawyers, teachers, traders, businessmen — not workers.

The Frankfurt parliament, 18 May 1848

• 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), giving the body its name — the Frankfurt parliament.
• They drafted a constitution for a German nation. Its core idea: a monarchy subject to a parliament — the king would rule, but under the elected house, not above it.
• The crown was offered to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia — and he rejected it.
• Extension (not in NCERT): the assembly adopted its constitution on 28 March 1849, and a delegation offered him the imperial crown on 3 April 1849 [2]. He refused because, as a conservative, he would take a crown only from the German princes, not from an elected assembly, and he disliked how limited the power was [2].

• His refusal ended the movement's last real chance; Prussia and Austria then withdrew support [2].

• Why the parliament failed from inside:

• It 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 — the very crowds that had made the revolution possible.
• With no popular base, it was finally disbanded by troops.

Women in 1848 — present, but not counted

• Women took an active part: they formed their own political associations, started newspapers, and joined political meetings and demonstrations.
• Yet they were denied the right to vote during the assembly elections.
• At the Church of St Paul they were let in only as observers in the visitors' gallery — they could watch, not sit or vote.
• The set debate to quote in an answer:
• Carl Welcker, an elected liberal deputy, argued that nature had made men and women for "different functions" — man for public life, woman for the home.
• Louise Otto-Peters (1819-95), founder of a feminist political association and a women's journal, wrote in 1849: "Liberty is indivisible!" — you cannot free men and leave women unfree.

• An anonymous reader wrote in 1850 that "the stupidest cattle-herder possesses the right to vote, simply because he is a man" — while educated women had none.

• Exam point: Welcker = against; Otto-Peters = for; "Liberty is indivisible!" = her line, 1849.

Aftermath: the conservatives won but had to change

• Monarchs crushed the revolts of 1848. But they saw that the old order could no longer be kept 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 Hungarians were granted more autonomy in 1867 by the Habsburg rulers.
• The lesson for the answer: 1848 failed politically but succeeded socially — the liberal-national demands were later delivered from above by conservative rulers.

Prelims Hooks

• Silesian weavers' revolt — 1845; the eyewitness account was written by journalist Wilhelm Wolff; eleven weavers were shot.
• February 1848 — barricades in Paris; Louis Philippe fled; he abdicated on 24 February 1848 [3].
• The French Republic of 1848 granted suffrage to all adult males above 21, the right to work, and set up national workshops.
• The Frankfurt parliament met on 18 May 1848 with 831 elected deputies in the Church of St Paul.
• The Frankfurt constitution proposed a German nation headed by a monarchy subject to parliament; the crown was refused by Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia (offered 3 April 1849) [2].
• Women at the Frankfurt parliament were admitted only to the visitors' gallery; they had no vote.
• "Liberty is indivisible!" — Louise Otto-Peters, 1849. Carl Welcker took the opposite side ('different functions').
• After 1848, serfdom and bonded labour were abolished in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia; Hungarians got more autonomy in 1867.
• Cause of pauperism: cheap machine-made English textile imports ruined hand producers in Europe.
• Louis Blanc headed the national workshops; their closure caused the June Days, 23-26 June 1848 [3].

Mains Points

• Two revolutions ran together in 1848 and pulled apart. The hunger revolt of workers, artisans and peasants demanded bread and work; the liberal revolution of the middle classes demanded a constitution and a nation. When the Frankfurt parliament refused workers' economic demands, the alliance broke — and once the street withdrew, troops dispersed the assembly. Use this to argue that nationalism in 1848 failed because it had a narrow social base.
• Failure of the liberals, victory of their agenda. Friedrich Wilhelm IV's refusal of the crown [2] showed that unification would not come from an elected assembly. The same goals were later achieved from above — by Prussian state power under Bismarck — while conservatives conceded the social demands (end of serfdom, Hungarian autonomy 1867). Nationalism shifted from a liberal-democratic force to a conservative, state-led one after 1848.
• The woman question is a test of liberal ideas. Liberals defined "all adult males above 21" as universal. Otto-Peters' "Liberty is indivisible!" exposes the gap between the language of universal rights and its actual limits. Useful in GS-I answers on the history of women's movements and on the limits of 19th-century liberalism.
• Economic distress as the trigger of political change. Population growth, machine imports, feudal dues and bad harvests produced pauperism; pauperism produced 1845 Silesia and 1848 Paris. Good linkage between the Industrial Revolution and the political map of Europe.