The 1848 Revolutions: Europe’s Democratic Uprisings
The Revolutions of 1848: The Springtime of Peoples
Progress in the 1830s fell short and no longer served the interests of the bourgeoisie. Converging in 1848 were the needs to expand the conquests of the bourgeois, liberal, and nationalist unrest caused by industrialization. The European revolutions were demanding democracy. The revolutionary crisis arrived in a context of economic hardship: bad crops caused soaring commodity prices, which in turn ended up affecting the demand for manufactured products. The revolutionary movement was simultaneous throughout Europe. The bourgeoisie and workers (proletariat) were on the same side.
The Explosion in Paris and the Second French Republic
In February 1848 came the fall of Louis Philippe, whose policies had become very inadequate to the aspirations of the more advanced bourgeoisie, and the proclamation of the Second Republic by the provisional government. The following were adopted:
- Universal male suffrage
- Freedom of the press
- Abolition of the death penalty
- Abolition of slavery
The government decided to intervene to end the strike with the creation of national workshops, which came to employ 120,000 workers.
A new National Constituent Assembly was elected by universal suffrage. It was moderately Republican (the Democrats were radical left, with the first representatives of workers, although a minority).
June 1848: Closure of national workshops led to an insurrection of the workers, followed by savage repression. This marked the final separation between the working class and the bourgeoisie.
December 1848: Louis Napoleon Bonaparte became President of the Republic. He proclaimed himself emperor in 1852, establishing the Second French Empire.
The Revolutions in Austria, Italy, and Germany
In the Austrian Empire, the fall of Metternich occurred. Ferdinand I abdicated, and Emperor Franz Joseph (1848-1916) became king as a constitutional monarch. However, the independence and nationalist movements in Italy, Hungary, and among the Slavic peoples (Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks) were harshly repressed by the Austrians.
In the Italian states, liberal constitutions had been proclaimed, and the King of Piedmont, Charles Albert, had been given the task of leading a nascent movement for unification, which, for the moment, had to be put on hold.
The German states acted similarly, establishing constitutions and, through universal suffrage, electing a parliament (Parliament of Frankfurt) that drafted a federal constitution. This parliament offered the crown to Frederick William of Prussia, who rejected it due to the parliamentary opposition to liberalism. This marked the end of the attempted unification.
Consequences of the Events of 1848
Feudalism ended in countries where it remained in force, except Russia. Most of Europe had established parliamentary regimes with moderate constitutions and electoral systems based on a census (in France, it remained universal male suffrage). The working class permanently separated from the bourgeoisie to pursue their economic, political, and social interests. The bourgeoisie ceased to act as a revolutionary class.