Cambridge IGCSE History

Liberalism and nationalism before 1848

After the defeat of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) rebuilt Europe to keep the old monarchies secure. The Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, was the main defender of that settlement. He worked to stop any change, and in the German Confederation (thirty-nine states under Austrian leadership) and in Italy, which was split into separate states, he relied on censorship, police and Austrian troops.

Two ideas worked against this. Liberalism was the belief in constitutions, an elected parliament, the rule of law, free speech and a free press, with the vote usually going to men who owned property. Its supporters were mostly the educated middle class, who paid taxes but had little say in government. Nationalism was the belief that people who shared a language, history and culture should form one nation with its own state. It mattered most where a people was divided among many states (Germans and Italians) or ruled by foreigners (Italians under Austria, Hungarians and Czechs within the Austrian Empire, which was a patchwork of Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Italians and others under the Habsburg emperor).

Both ideas had spread through universities, newspapers, secret societies and the memory of the French Revolution. By 1848 many educated people expected change, but liberals and nationalists did not always want the same things, and that division matters for why the revolutions failed.

Why so many revolutions broke out in 1848

The immediate cause was economic hardship. Poor harvests in 1845–47, with potato blight in much of Europe, pushed up the price of food. A downturn in trade followed in 1846–47, so that factory and craft workers lost jobs at the same time as bread became more expensive. Cities had grown fast, and crowds of hungry, unemployed people in them were easy to turn towards protest. Peasants also resented the dues and labour they owed landlords in the Austrian lands.

Rulers had few answers. Governments were slow to give reforms and used troops against crowds, and news of a rising in one capital travelled quickly by newspaper and railway, so a successful protest in one place encouraged people in the next.

France

France had been ruled since 1830 by King Louis-Philippe, who favoured the wealthy; only a small fraction of men could vote. His chief minister, François Guizot, refused to widen the vote. In early 1848 reformers held a series of political banquets because open meetings were banned, and when the government banned a large banquet in Paris on 22 February, crowds built barricades. Part of the National Guard sided with the protesters, and on 24 February Louis-Philippe abdicated and fled.

A Second Republic was proclaimed with universal male suffrage. A provisional government promised the right to work and set up national workshops to give jobs to the unemployed in Paris. The elections of April 1848 returned a conservative assembly, which saw the workshops as costly and a threat, and closed them in June. Workers rose in the June Days, and General Cavaignac crushed them in several days of fighting with thousands killed. In December 1848 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, won the presidential election by a wide margin, helped by the famous name and by voters' fear of disorder. In 1851 he seized power in a coup and in 1852 became Emperor Napoleon III. France therefore ended the revolution with a different ruler but not a liberal state.

The Austrian Empire

News from Paris led to protests in Vienna in March 1848. Students and workers demanded reform, Metternich resigned and fled to England, and the emperor, Ferdinand I, promised a constitution. The government also ended serfdom on the empire's estates in 1848, a lasting change.

Nationalist movements within the empire pressed their own demands:

• In Hungary, Lajos Kossuth led demands for self-government. The Hungarian parliament passed the March Laws, which gave Hungary its own government, ended serfdom and kept only a link to the Habsburg crown.
• In Bohemia, Czech leaders asked for more autonomy, and a Slav congress met in Prague in June 1848. The Austrian general Windischgrätz bombarded the city and ended it.
• In Italy, the Austrian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia rose (see below).

The Habsburgs recovered because their army remained loyal. Windischgrätz retook Vienna in October 1848. In December 1848 Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his young nephew Franz Joseph, who ruled until 1916. The government played national groups off against each other; Croats and others who feared Hungarian rule fought for the emperor against the Hungarians. When Hungary declared itself a republic in April 1849, Tsar Nicholas I sent a Russian army to help, and the Hungarians surrendered in August 1849. The constitution was withdrawn and Austria returned to firm central control.

The Italian states

Revolts began in Sicily in January 1848. In March, the people of Milan drove the Austrian commander Radetzky out in the Five Days, and Venice declared a republic. King Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia declared war on Austria, hoping to lead a united northern Italy. Radetzky defeated him at Custoza in July 1848 and again at Novara in March 1849, after which Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel II.

In Rome, the Pope fled and a Roman Republic was set up, with Giuseppe Mazzini as a leader and Giuseppe Garibaldi defending it. French troops sent by Louis-Napoleon (partly to win Catholic support at home) restored the Pope in 1849, and Venice, which had held out under Daniele Manin, fell in August 1849. Piedmont kept the liberal constitution (the Statuto) Charles Albert had granted, which later mattered a great deal.

The German states

In March 1848 riots in Berlin and elsewhere led rulers to promise reforms. King Frederick William IV of Prussia promised a constitution and agreed to German unity under Prussian leadership. An assembly, the Frankfurt Parliament, met in May 1848 with delegates chosen by the men of the German states, most of them professionals and officials. It faced a difficult question: a Grossdeutschland including the German lands of Austria, or a Kleindeutschland without Austria and under Prussia. Austria would not accept a smaller Germany and the Parliament eventually voted for the small solution. It offered the crown of a united Germany to Frederick William IV in 1849. He refused, because he would not accept a crown from an elected assembly and feared offending Austria. The Parliament, with no army or taxes of its own, collapsed in 1849 and troops dispersed what was left.

Prussia then tried to form its own union of the German states in 1849–50, but Austria, backed by Russia, forced it to give up the plan at Olmütz in November 1850. The old German Confederation under Austrian leadership returned.

What the revolutions had in common

Most began with the same grievances of poverty, the demand for constitutions, and the wish for national self-rule. They also spread from one capital to another within weeks. In most places the rulers made concessions at first because their authority had suddenly collapsed.

Why most failed

• The middle-class liberals and working-class radicals wanted different things. Once workers demanded jobs and better conditions, as in Paris, many liberals turned to defend property and order.
• Nationalists clashed with each other. Hungarians wanted their own state while Croats, Serbs and Romanians in Hungary wanted theirs, and the Frankfurt Parliament could not decide where Germany's borders lay.
• The traditional rulers kept the loyalty of their armies, and once the first shock passed they used them.
• The revolutionaries had little experience and no armed force of their own, and Russia gave Austria help when it was needed.
• Peasants, who made up most of the population, were satisfied once serfdom and dues ended, so they lost interest in the revolution.

What changed

The revolutions failed in their main aims, yet some things changed. Serfdom ended in the Austrian Empire. Prussia kept a constitution, although it was weighted heavily towards the rich through a three-class voting system. Piedmont had its constitution. France gained universal male suffrage, which Napoleon III kept. The experience also taught nationalists that unity would not come from speeches and assemblies; the next generation, in Germany under Bismarck and in Italy under Cavour, relied on war and diplomacy and on strong states.