The revolutions of 1848 :

The Spring of Nations

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Revolutionary
wave
Started in France
Spread to the rest of Europe
Widespread violence
Quickly defeated, but with long-
term ramifications
Affected all European nations
with the notable exceptions of
Britain, Netherlands, Russia

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 Sources of the
revolution
Governments influenced by ideas of liberalism
A growing class of industrial workers susceptible to
nationalist, republican, socialist influence; demanding
political rights
Dissatisfaction with the reactionary, pro-monarchical
political order established by the Congress of Vienna
Accelerating technological, industrial change
Proliferation of newspapers intensifying political
awareness among the masses
Economic and agricultural downturns
Nobility frustrated with royal absolutism
Against Marx’s predictions, middle classes agitated more
strongly than disorganized workers

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1848 in FRANCE
 February: End of constitutional monarchy
(1830-1848)
Creation of the Second Republic
June: workers’ rebellion
December: Louis - Napoléon Bonaparte
(Napoleon’s nephew) elected President
(for a four-year term)
freedom of the press; end of censorship;
shortened working hours; outlawed child labour;
creating state-subsidized jobs - unsuccessfully
1851, declared himself ‘absolute’ President for
10 years
1852, crowned himself Emperor
(= Napoleon III ; the Second French
Empire)
Ruled as Emperor until the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870

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1848 in GERMAN STATES
March 1848: general uprising in Berlin; barricades
A political retreat by Prussian King Frederick
(Friedrich) IV
Suppression of violent revolution
Government reshuffle
Appointment of liberal ministers
Spring 1848: Parliament convenes in Frankfurt
Autumn: reforms ebbing away
Liberal ministers recalled
Government once again subsumed under monarchical
influence
German states suspended ‘halfway’:
New constitution has not been adopted
No advances in territorial unification
Friederich’s position as a monarch further
strengthened

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1848 in ITALIAN STATES
 Italy 1848: disunited; fragmented; partly
ruled by foreign monarchies
Grassroots unrest led by Giuseppe Mazzini,
Giuseppe Garibaldi
1848 a republic established in Venice
February 1849 in Rome
Also Sicily, Sardinia, Tuscany, Naples, Milan
Austrian-dominated North leading an
anti-Austrian revolt
Fall of Venetian, Roman republics to
overwhelming Austrian military power
Italy’s unification project abandoned once
again
By August 1849, restoration of the pre-
revolution order

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1848 in AUSTRIAN
EMPIRE
 Vienna uprising
Metternich resigned, sought asylum in England
Austrian Emperor made a promise of a
constitution, appointed liberal-minded
ministers
October 1848: new democratic uprising;
government fled
Three weeks of violent struggle; ended with
revolutionaries’ capitulation

Ripple effect: Unrest among the Austrian

Empire’s Slavic peoples (Slovaks, Czechs,
Slovenes, Poles), putting forward a nationalist
agenda and demanding civil rights

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SLAVIC PEOPLES IN THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE
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 SUMMARY
Emerging European nations’ struggle for
sovereignty, civil and political rights
Drive to unify the fragmented territories of
modern-day Italy, Germany
A fight against oppression, against rule by
foreign monarchical dynasties
Upholding the right of nations to freedom and
independence

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