Continental Industrialization, ca. 1850

“The Seizure” (1847): Bad harvests spread hardship

among family farmers throughout Europe in the 1840s

K. W. Hübner, “The Silesian Weavers,” 1844:Merchants slash the price offered weavers for their linen

“Hunger and Despair”

“Government Assistance”

(Satirical leaflet,

early 1848)

The spread of popular uprisings in 1848

Feb 22: ParisFeb 27: BadenMar 13: ViennaMar 15:

BudapestMar 18: BerlinMar 18: MilanMar 19: MunichMay 3:

DresdenJune 9:

Bucharest

Artisans, not factory workers, predominated in the street fighting.

“Lamartine before City Hall, 25 February 1848.”The Paris crowd proclaimed a “Second Republic,” led by a

Romantic poet and the socialist Louis Blanc.But rural voters elected a conservative legislature in April.

Frédéric Sorrieu, “The Triumph of the Universal, Democratic, and Social Republic: The Pact”

“Street Fighting on Rue Soufflot, Paris, June 25, 1848”(3,000 Parisians died in the June Days, vs. 500 in

February)

The dissolution of the National Workshops in June 1848 provoked desperation in working-class

neighborhoods: Daumier, “The Uprising”

“The Barricade”(June 1848)

Louis Napoleon(1808-1873)

won 75% of thevote in the presidential election of

December 1848 and then gained

control of the army and police

Louis Napoleon seized power in December 1851and drove 100,000 republicans into exile:

Daumier, “The Fugitives”

Protesters clash with cavalry, Vienna, March 13, 1848

“The Fall of Metternich, 13 March 1848”

Berliners celebrate on the barricades on the evening of March 18, 1848 (royal palace in background)

Ceremonial opening of the

“National Assembly”

in St. Paul’s Church,

Frankfurt a.M., May 18, 1848,

elected to write a federal constitution for

Germany

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels returned to Germany to support its “bourgeois revolution” and organize workers

Austrian Imperial Troops reconquer Vienna, October 1848:Nationality divided revolutionaries in the Habsburg realm.

In Berlin (as in Paris), fighting broke outwhen the new government terminated an

expensiveprogram to give jobs to the unemployed

In November 1848 the Berlin National Guard agreed to

allow the Prussian army to reoccupy the city

Prussian troops advance against the revolutionary army of Baden (including Friedrich Engels), June

22, 1849

France, Prussia, & Austria sweep the revolutionaries out of Europe (1849)

CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848

1. Austria and Prussia adopt written constitutions, with limited suffrage and strong powers for the monarch.

2. In the “Second Empire” (1851-1870), Napoleon III combines authoritarian rule with the quest to promote industrialization and gain prestige in foreign policy.

3. Movements for national self-determination spread among the Czechs, Poles, Magyars, Croats, and Italians.

4. Gradual reforms help Great Britain to avoid any mass uprising, except in Ireland.

5. An economic boom in the 1850s and expansion of police forces reduce popular unrest.