Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame And The Fight For A New World 1848-1849, Clark - B

                       "In 1848, parallel political tumults broke out cross the entire continent, from Switzerland and Portugal to Wallachia and Moldovia, from Norway, Denmark and Sweden to Palermo and the Ionian Islands. This was the only truly European revolution that there has ever been."

                        The tumult of revolution was occasioned by poverty. As societies industrialized and cities became more crowded, the living conditions of the urban poor deteriorated into a hell on earth. Demographic growth helped contribute to "massive impoverishment." "An overview of Europe in the decades before the 1848 revolutions reveals a panorama of social conflicts driven by competition over every conceivable resource in a world marked by scarcity and low rates of productivity growth." A painful "international commercial-industrial crisis" followed. Food shortages led to starvation, death, and food riots. The social order was fraying.

                      "Early-to mid-nineteenth-century nationalism was above all a feeling, rather than a set of principles or arguments." A hostility to foreign rule was the common theme of nationalism. It also implied a kind of popular sovereignty as nations resided in peoples not dynasties. Europe had seen a "cascading of political upheaval" in 1830. The glorious French overthrow of its government in 1830 was followed by unrest and upheavals in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Poland. "Europe would spend the next eighteen years digesting the implications of 1830." What became known as the July Revolution inspired thoughts of republicanism, and enhanced freedoms in France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Hungary. As the decade of the 1840's progressed, aggressive demands for more rights were made upon the rulers of France, Italy, and Germany.

                     The first light of revolution came in January in Palermo, Sicily. Within weeks, the Bourbon king promised a constitution. In Paris, in late February, government suppression of an assembly sent people into the streets, and up went the barricades.  Violence exploded and the man in the street quickly overran the soldiers of the regime. The French authorities could not contain an outbreak much broader and deeper than 1830. Louis Philippe, France's elected monarch, abdicated and fled. A month later, "simultaneous detonations" spread through the continent. In Vienna and Buda-Pest, demands for reform of the monarchy were made. Chancellor Metternich resigned and fled to London. "The revolution was a denunciation of certain policies and ministers, not the monarchy as such." The emperor announced that delegations from around the empire would convene and create a constitution. When a squad of soldiers attacked demonstrators in Berlin, the outrage spread through all classes of the city. The king announced the "abolition of censorship and the introduction of a constitutional system" for Prussia. The Milanese expelled their Austrian masters. In the Netherlands, the king conceded constitutional reforms before any demands were even made. There were no organized planners, nor was any one group in charge. "The revolutionaries of 1848 were not the executors of a plan, but improvisors for whom the present was an exposed frontier."

                      The revolutionaries now faced the challenge of establishing institutions to actually govern, and to do so in a democratic manner. "Across Europe, the journeys from upheaval and conflict to the quasi-stabilization of a post insurrectionary order reveal an extraordinary diversity of forms." The provisional governments that were established were "fragile." Parliaments were formed, and constitutions drafted. Emancipation in one form or another came to slaves in the colonies, women, the Roma and the Jews. "The outbreak of revolution in 1848 brought euphoria and a sense of widening horizons to Jewish communities." However, these newly found freedoms and rights would prove to be short lived. In the aftermath of the upheavals, "everything was up for grabs" and the outcomes were vastly different from country to country. France established the Second Republic, the 39 states of the German Confederation pursued freedoms of the press and assembly, but mostly just talked and debated national unification. Throughout the lands of the Habsburg there was pandemonium that could be the only result in an empire with dozens and dozens of peoples, languages, and local traditions. Hungary freed the serfs and realized independence by establishing a Diet with a light "personal" commitment to the emperor. In Galicia, the Ukrainian language was officially recognized,  Romania set up a provisional government, Denmark established a less autocratic constitutional monarchy, Sicily overthrew the Bourbons, and in northern Italy, the various city-states declared their independence from Vienna.

                    The counter-revolution that followed was "an arc as expansive and encompassing as the revolutions themselves." The first monarchy to be restored was in Naples and Palermo, where the forces of the Bourbons began to roll back the revolutionaries in May, 1848. The king abolished the institutions of independence and began to punish the rebels. Ferdinand II's retributions inspired autocrats throughout Europe. In June, the Austrian Empire struck back in Prague and bombarded the city. Austrian armed forces under Radetzky fought throughout Italy and defeated the various Italian armies, which fought bravely but were not coherently organized to the degree necessary to take on the established forces. The court in Vienna then struck at rebels in Hungary and in the Balkans. In Paris, a rightward drift in the parliament eventually led to the election of Louis Napoleon, who was known to be holding monarchist dreams. "In Berlin too, the energy of the revolution was dissipating fast." The Hohenzollern king conceded that the government was of the king and the people, but otherwise hammered home the monarchy's control. Although the revolution was being extinguished everywhere, it successfully came to the fore in Rome. The Papal State, in existence for 1100 years, saw Pope Pius IX flee because of his connection to the Austrians, guarantors of his temporal power. The ultimate force of the counter-revolution was the army of the Tsar. Russia invaded Romania and most importantly, restored imperial order in Hungary. In the end, "the transnational revolutionary networks never mustered a power capable of fending off the threat posed by the counter-revolutionary international."

                    The various restorations led to the punishment and repression of the revolutionaries and thousands were exiled. However, there was not a return to the status quo ante. There were now parliaments throughout the continent, and even in Austria, where Franz Joseph rescinded the constitution, he acknowledged "principles of equality for all citizens." There was a new moderation set by a "post-revolutionary rapprochement." Countries allowed for increased trade and encouraged economic liberalization in the pursuit of growth. France's railways entered a "golden age." The cities of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, sites of barricades and fighting, all modernized through the construction of roads, sewers, parks, and systems for the delivery of clean water. The walls that defended Vienna were torn down and the famous Ringstrasse was built. "The panorama of administrative change after 1848 suggests revolution has had a homogenizing, or Europeanizing, impact." "For generations, the question of whether these revolutions succeeded or failed" has haunted historians. What they were is "deeply consequential." Institutions and everyday life changed for the better, although universal suffrage was still decades away, and the continent would be rent by nationalism and war in the 20th century. This tome is over 700 pages of densely detailed academic history. I picked it up because the author wrote a brilliant book about the origins of the World War I a decade ago (Sleepwalkers, a 2013 blogpost). This, however, saw me peruse, skip and scan a vast amount of material.