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New Approaches to European History #2
The European Revolutions, 1848-1851
Jonathan Sperber has updated and expanded his study of the European Revolutions between 1848-1851 in this second edition. Emphasizing the socioeconomic background to the revolutions, and the diversity of political opinions and experiences of participants, Sperber offers an inclusive narrative of the revolutionary events and a structural analysis of the reasons for the revolutions' ultimate failure. A wide-reaching conclusion and a detailed bibliography make his book ideal for classroom use and the general reader wishing a better knowledge of a major historical event.
334 pages, Paperback
First published January 28, 1994
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March 29, 2018
This is an extended review of this useful book. However, readers should be familiar with the definitions of classical liberalism and classical conservatism before proceeding.
The Congress of Vienna ended late in 1815 and gave Europe the Quadruple Alliance in which the victorious Allies—Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia—agreed to continue their coalition against France, meet yearly to discuss issues of ongoing importance, and aid each other in repressing liberal political movements across the continent. In the process, the Allies doused the last flickering embers of the bonfire of continental political liberalism ignited by the French Revolution over twenty years earlier. In its place, a heavy fog of conservatism and political repression came to rest over the continent.
Though there were occasional breaks in this fog over the next generation, it was not until the revolutions of 1848 that it showed any signs of lifting over significant portions of Europe. While the oppressive political regimes of European monarchies were a central cause of the revolutionary events in that fateful year, Jonathan Sperber’s book The European Revolutionaries, 1848-1851 reminds us that reactionary politicians were not the only impulse behind the widespread agitation and revolutionary upheaval. Rather, economic troubles and social change also figure prominently in his explanation for the momentous political events of 1848-51. However, as if to bring the story from 1815 to 1851 full circle, Sperber also concludes his narrative with a description of the ultimate triumph of the forces of conservatism and reaction over their (classical) liberal opponents.
This begs the question of what happened throughout Europe in 1848-9 that allowed (classical) conservative politicians to clamp down on the opposition and maintain their grip on political power into the second half of the nineteenth century. It also requires an explanation of why they were successful, and the revolutionaries less so, in their efforts. Sperber provides us with many of the answers in his book.
In his introduction to The European Revolutions, 1848-1851, Sperber makes explicit his intention to describe some of the social and economic tensions that made widespread support for revolutionary movements a possibility. He points out that, while supporters of classical liberalism reached a new level of activism in these years, this political involvement did not occur in a vacuum. Instead, gradual but noticeable declines in the standard of living for many Europeans, along with repressive social institutions such as, but not limited to, serfdom in Hapsburg and Prussian lands, aristocratic privilege, and regulations on the use of the forest, created widespread discontent among many segments of the population.
To maintain their support among the general populace, European governments had to take these sources of discontent into account to some extent. Because of a limited number of government officials (estimated at one per 7,000 inhabitants in Prussia, for example) to enforce their will, monarchs needed to mollify their people if the all-important collection of taxes were to occur. The church was one instrument toward this end. When order did break down in 1848, popular discontent took the form of class struggle at times. In western Europe, this meant discontent among debtors against their creditors; in the eastern portion of the continent, it more often meant a conflict between serfs and their lords.
In addition, the years immediately preceding 1848 featured a run of poor harvests, an economic recession, and a banking panic. As a result, many commoners perceived they lived in “an era in which the sum total of social wealth was visibly increasing, and yet poverty was increasing as well, and the living standards of the majority of the population seemed to be in decline.” (26) In most cases, European monarchs used local authorities to handle these situations when possible. If all else failed, they could call on the army to maintain order. However, what made 1848 different from other episodes of economic hard times was how these economic considerations combined with political ones.
While the description of the social and economic preconditions for the revolutions of 1848 is very helpful in understanding their causes, Sperber does not forget that there were new political forces afoot as well. Prominent among these was nationalism. However, Sperber realizes that nationalism did not operate the same everywhere, or even among all groups in one location. In both Italy and the German lands, classical liberals sought to work with existing institutions to achieve national unity. Radicals, on the other hand, saw the existing system as the primary obstacle to national unity; therefore, one of their paramount objectives was the overthrow of that system.
Complicating the nationalistic agenda in both Italy and Germany was the religious dimension. For the Germans, the issue was a conflict of Catholicism and Protestantism, while in Catholic Italy it was one of clericalism or anti-clericalism. There was nationalism in the Austrian Empire as well, but the situation was even more complex there because of the heterogeneous nature of the state, not to mention that many peasants saw their local landlord, and not the state per se, as their most vigorous oppressor. In the end, Sperber cites these divisions within nationalist ranks as one of the primary reasons for their ultimate political failure:
Different nationalist movements, all sporting liberal or democratic principles, all opposed, to a greater or lesser extent, to absolutist rule and to serfdom and a society of estates, found themselves fighting each other, in circumstances where the only winners would be precisely those supporters of absolutism and feudalism whom the nationalists opposed. (101)
The revolutions themselves are notable for two developments. One is the ease with which they toppled the established order at the outset; the other is that they stopped far short of dismantling that order. Even in Hungary, which went to war with Austrian royalist supporters, the initial impulse was to recognize the Hapsburg monarch as King. Sperber credits this moderation, and its eventual failure to produce lasting change in 1848, to the competing goals of various national groups within the Austrian Empire; by quarreling with each other instead of uniting, they insured the defeat of all, one by one.
Another reason for the relative moderation of the 1848 revolutions was the social outlook of the people who participated politically. Because the electorate was inexperienced, early elections tended to put influential local men in positions of power. These men, whom Sperber calls “notables,” having gained their influential position through the old order, did not want to overthrow it. Rather, their political leanings tended to fall between the liberal center and the right. They wanted a few reforms of the old system, such as written constitutions and elected legislatures chosen through a rather limited suffrage, to curb the absolute power of the monarch, but had no serious intention of overturning the system that had made them prominent in the first place. Additionally, they all had the lessons of revolutionary France as an example of what could happen when the established order lost control, and most members of the established order, new or old, wished to avoid that experience in 1848.
The result was that, despite all the revolutionary activity, the monarchs and their supporters quickly regained their nerves and rallied their forces, and by 1849, were back in control throughout the continent. Indeed, one of the reasons that 1848 did not see a repeat of the French Revolution of 1789 was that this time, leaders understood that they must command the loyalty of the army. With military loyalty assured, monarchs could then move successfully against the revolutionaries, both in terms of street fighting and in terms of ministerial appointments. Sperber writes, “the outcome of the revolution suggested a new connection: an army remaining loyal to its commanders could defeat any revolutionary movement.” (250) He believes that, from this point forward, successful revolution was only possible when the army had been defeated and state authority shattered, as in France in 1870 or Russia in 1917.
By the early 1850s, with authoritarian forces back in control throughout continental Europe, the hopes of a generation of European liberals seemed buried in rubble alongside the bodies of those who manned the barricades against the artillery barrages of royalist forces in 1849. There was no unification of Germany or Italy, and in France, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was on his way to becoming emperor. That is not to imply, however, that the revolutions of 1848 had no lasting outcomes. The abolition of serfdom (everywhere except for Russia) was a significant step forward for a great number of European peasants. In addition, though they failed in the short term, the revolutions of 1848 introduced the concept of parliamentary, constitutional government into the absolutist states of Europe for the first time. Sperber credits these experiences with playing a role in the unification of Italy and Germany during the subsequent generation.
Descriptive detail constitutes one of the great strengths of The European Revolutions, 1848-1851. Sperber (a noted social historian and author of multiple prize-winning books about this era) draws parallels between his topic and later events but cautions the reader against putting too much stock in those parallels as sufficient explanation for what took place. Instead, he concentrates on a tremendous range of description that covers virtually all parts of Europe that experienced revolution in 1848.
Part of this detailed description includes the barricades and artillery bombardments in European capitals, to be sure. However, Sperber also takes the reader into the rural provinces of Galicia and Transylvania in the Austrian Empire to feel the rage of the peasantry against their aristocratic oppressors to try to bring the whole revolutionary experience into the light. Another ingenious device Sperber employs is to classify the revolutionary movements in terms of the Party of Order and the Party of Movement. This works well because, as the action unfolds, in most situations the liberal revolutionaries constitute the Party of Movement, but in some cases they themselves become the Party of Order against the demands of the radicals.
Another strong point of this work is Sperber’s decision, previously noted, to consider the revolutions of 1848 as a conjunction of many factors; political, economic, and social conditions all contributed to the overthrow, however brief, of the absolute monarchs in 1848. Though the monarchs would return by 1849, thanks to their control of the armed forces, they could not undo all the damage. The brief flowering of liberal political values in 1848 punched holes in the veneer of authoritarianism that the conservatives could not completely mend.
An interesting omission from this work concerns the role of Great Britain and Russia in the revolutions of 1848. While this is justified on the grounds that these two nations experienced no meaningful activity to compare with that of the rest of the continent, surely, they were involved in ways that are absent from the text. Readers learn about Russian intervention on behalf of Austria against Hungary, but little else about how these two powers interacted with both the new liberal governments of 1848 and those governments they displaced. After all, Metternich fled to Britain after the revolutionaries ousted him from Austria in 1848; given his international reputation and talents, he must have done something besides merely sit on his hands and wait for the return of autocracy. Another criticism is that though the maps Sperber employs are plentiful in quantity, they largely fail to add anything substantial to his story and occasionally serve to confuse the reader. Critics may also question his assertion (page 167) that the state of communications in Europe prevented the operation of political parties with centralized leadership in the 1840s, considering that the United States, much larger than any European nation save Russia, had operated with organized political parties since the election of 1800. Finally, his narrative occasionally slips into the passive voice, an unfortunate irony given the action implied in discussions of revolution.
Still, it’s a good book that any student or person interested in 19th century Europe should read. There is a nice combination of coverage and detail, and Sperber’s discussion has nice balance among the different factors he believes contributed to the uprisings of 1848. I’d give it 4.5 stars if that were possible.
The Congress of Vienna ended late in 1815 and gave Europe the Quadruple Alliance in which the victorious Allies—Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia—agreed to continue their coalition against France, meet yearly to discuss issues of ongoing importance, and aid each other in repressing liberal political movements across the continent. In the process, the Allies doused the last flickering embers of the bonfire of continental political liberalism ignited by the French Revolution over twenty years earlier. In its place, a heavy fog of conservatism and political repression came to rest over the continent.
Though there were occasional breaks in this fog over the next generation, it was not until the revolutions of 1848 that it showed any signs of lifting over significant portions of Europe. While the oppressive political regimes of European monarchies were a central cause of the revolutionary events in that fateful year, Jonathan Sperber’s book The European Revolutionaries, 1848-1851 reminds us that reactionary politicians were not the only impulse behind the widespread agitation and revolutionary upheaval. Rather, economic troubles and social change also figure prominently in his explanation for the momentous political events of 1848-51. However, as if to bring the story from 1815 to 1851 full circle, Sperber also concludes his narrative with a description of the ultimate triumph of the forces of conservatism and reaction over their (classical) liberal opponents.
This begs the question of what happened throughout Europe in 1848-9 that allowed (classical) conservative politicians to clamp down on the opposition and maintain their grip on political power into the second half of the nineteenth century. It also requires an explanation of why they were successful, and the revolutionaries less so, in their efforts. Sperber provides us with many of the answers in his book.
In his introduction to The European Revolutions, 1848-1851, Sperber makes explicit his intention to describe some of the social and economic tensions that made widespread support for revolutionary movements a possibility. He points out that, while supporters of classical liberalism reached a new level of activism in these years, this political involvement did not occur in a vacuum. Instead, gradual but noticeable declines in the standard of living for many Europeans, along with repressive social institutions such as, but not limited to, serfdom in Hapsburg and Prussian lands, aristocratic privilege, and regulations on the use of the forest, created widespread discontent among many segments of the population.
To maintain their support among the general populace, European governments had to take these sources of discontent into account to some extent. Because of a limited number of government officials (estimated at one per 7,000 inhabitants in Prussia, for example) to enforce their will, monarchs needed to mollify their people if the all-important collection of taxes were to occur. The church was one instrument toward this end. When order did break down in 1848, popular discontent took the form of class struggle at times. In western Europe, this meant discontent among debtors against their creditors; in the eastern portion of the continent, it more often meant a conflict between serfs and their lords.
In addition, the years immediately preceding 1848 featured a run of poor harvests, an economic recession, and a banking panic. As a result, many commoners perceived they lived in “an era in which the sum total of social wealth was visibly increasing, and yet poverty was increasing as well, and the living standards of the majority of the population seemed to be in decline.” (26) In most cases, European monarchs used local authorities to handle these situations when possible. If all else failed, they could call on the army to maintain order. However, what made 1848 different from other episodes of economic hard times was how these economic considerations combined with political ones.
While the description of the social and economic preconditions for the revolutions of 1848 is very helpful in understanding their causes, Sperber does not forget that there were new political forces afoot as well. Prominent among these was nationalism. However, Sperber realizes that nationalism did not operate the same everywhere, or even among all groups in one location. In both Italy and the German lands, classical liberals sought to work with existing institutions to achieve national unity. Radicals, on the other hand, saw the existing system as the primary obstacle to national unity; therefore, one of their paramount objectives was the overthrow of that system.
Complicating the nationalistic agenda in both Italy and Germany was the religious dimension. For the Germans, the issue was a conflict of Catholicism and Protestantism, while in Catholic Italy it was one of clericalism or anti-clericalism. There was nationalism in the Austrian Empire as well, but the situation was even more complex there because of the heterogeneous nature of the state, not to mention that many peasants saw their local landlord, and not the state per se, as their most vigorous oppressor. In the end, Sperber cites these divisions within nationalist ranks as one of the primary reasons for their ultimate political failure:
Different nationalist movements, all sporting liberal or democratic principles, all opposed, to a greater or lesser extent, to absolutist rule and to serfdom and a society of estates, found themselves fighting each other, in circumstances where the only winners would be precisely those supporters of absolutism and feudalism whom the nationalists opposed. (101)
The revolutions themselves are notable for two developments. One is the ease with which they toppled the established order at the outset; the other is that they stopped far short of dismantling that order. Even in Hungary, which went to war with Austrian royalist supporters, the initial impulse was to recognize the Hapsburg monarch as King. Sperber credits this moderation, and its eventual failure to produce lasting change in 1848, to the competing goals of various national groups within the Austrian Empire; by quarreling with each other instead of uniting, they insured the defeat of all, one by one.
Another reason for the relative moderation of the 1848 revolutions was the social outlook of the people who participated politically. Because the electorate was inexperienced, early elections tended to put influential local men in positions of power. These men, whom Sperber calls “notables,” having gained their influential position through the old order, did not want to overthrow it. Rather, their political leanings tended to fall between the liberal center and the right. They wanted a few reforms of the old system, such as written constitutions and elected legislatures chosen through a rather limited suffrage, to curb the absolute power of the monarch, but had no serious intention of overturning the system that had made them prominent in the first place. Additionally, they all had the lessons of revolutionary France as an example of what could happen when the established order lost control, and most members of the established order, new or old, wished to avoid that experience in 1848.
The result was that, despite all the revolutionary activity, the monarchs and their supporters quickly regained their nerves and rallied their forces, and by 1849, were back in control throughout the continent. Indeed, one of the reasons that 1848 did not see a repeat of the French Revolution of 1789 was that this time, leaders understood that they must command the loyalty of the army. With military loyalty assured, monarchs could then move successfully against the revolutionaries, both in terms of street fighting and in terms of ministerial appointments. Sperber writes, “the outcome of the revolution suggested a new connection: an army remaining loyal to its commanders could defeat any revolutionary movement.” (250) He believes that, from this point forward, successful revolution was only possible when the army had been defeated and state authority shattered, as in France in 1870 or Russia in 1917.
By the early 1850s, with authoritarian forces back in control throughout continental Europe, the hopes of a generation of European liberals seemed buried in rubble alongside the bodies of those who manned the barricades against the artillery barrages of royalist forces in 1849. There was no unification of Germany or Italy, and in France, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was on his way to becoming emperor. That is not to imply, however, that the revolutions of 1848 had no lasting outcomes. The abolition of serfdom (everywhere except for Russia) was a significant step forward for a great number of European peasants. In addition, though they failed in the short term, the revolutions of 1848 introduced the concept of parliamentary, constitutional government into the absolutist states of Europe for the first time. Sperber credits these experiences with playing a role in the unification of Italy and Germany during the subsequent generation.
Descriptive detail constitutes one of the great strengths of The European Revolutions, 1848-1851. Sperber (a noted social historian and author of multiple prize-winning books about this era) draws parallels between his topic and later events but cautions the reader against putting too much stock in those parallels as sufficient explanation for what took place. Instead, he concentrates on a tremendous range of description that covers virtually all parts of Europe that experienced revolution in 1848.
Part of this detailed description includes the barricades and artillery bombardments in European capitals, to be sure. However, Sperber also takes the reader into the rural provinces of Galicia and Transylvania in the Austrian Empire to feel the rage of the peasantry against their aristocratic oppressors to try to bring the whole revolutionary experience into the light. Another ingenious device Sperber employs is to classify the revolutionary movements in terms of the Party of Order and the Party of Movement. This works well because, as the action unfolds, in most situations the liberal revolutionaries constitute the Party of Movement, but in some cases they themselves become the Party of Order against the demands of the radicals.
Another strong point of this work is Sperber’s decision, previously noted, to consider the revolutions of 1848 as a conjunction of many factors; political, economic, and social conditions all contributed to the overthrow, however brief, of the absolute monarchs in 1848. Though the monarchs would return by 1849, thanks to their control of the armed forces, they could not undo all the damage. The brief flowering of liberal political values in 1848 punched holes in the veneer of authoritarianism that the conservatives could not completely mend.
An interesting omission from this work concerns the role of Great Britain and Russia in the revolutions of 1848. While this is justified on the grounds that these two nations experienced no meaningful activity to compare with that of the rest of the continent, surely, they were involved in ways that are absent from the text. Readers learn about Russian intervention on behalf of Austria against Hungary, but little else about how these two powers interacted with both the new liberal governments of 1848 and those governments they displaced. After all, Metternich fled to Britain after the revolutionaries ousted him from Austria in 1848; given his international reputation and talents, he must have done something besides merely sit on his hands and wait for the return of autocracy. Another criticism is that though the maps Sperber employs are plentiful in quantity, they largely fail to add anything substantial to his story and occasionally serve to confuse the reader. Critics may also question his assertion (page 167) that the state of communications in Europe prevented the operation of political parties with centralized leadership in the 1840s, considering that the United States, much larger than any European nation save Russia, had operated with organized political parties since the election of 1800. Finally, his narrative occasionally slips into the passive voice, an unfortunate irony given the action implied in discussions of revolution.
Still, it’s a good book that any student or person interested in 19th century Europe should read. There is a nice combination of coverage and detail, and Sperber’s discussion has nice balance among the different factors he believes contributed to the uprisings of 1848. I’d give it 4.5 stars if that were possible.
November 19, 2024
Maybe even 4.5 cause this was so interesting🗣️ I had to read it as a pdf but honestly wasn’t even mad about it, Sperber ate
September 30, 2018
Read for class - pretty good. Enlightening but not too academic.
November 21, 2025
It is obviously meant for a classroom. It lacks all the usual fluff and momentum building of history books meant for general audiences.
Enlighteningly dry.
Enlighteningly dry.
December 9, 2017
An accessible textbook that gives you all the major themes. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the explosion of newspaper publications across Europe in 1848; I wish there were more written about this!
October 8, 2014
Sperber suggests we should learn about the 1848 revolutions because they were the only major political movement of the 19th century and he may be right. The mass political uprisings seem anachronistic for the middle of the 19th century. Plagued by the lessons they learned from 1789, they provided the lessons necessary for late 19th century movements successful in Italy and Germany. Sperber paints a compelling, structuralist picture of 19th century Europe and its problem. He eschews romantic portrayals of players or barricades, diverting more focus to the experiences of non-urban participants in the revolutions. Complete with some funny anecdotes and weird structural choices (chs. 5 & 6 are the same in different format - analytical v. narrative?), this is a great comprehensive inquiry text for those looking to learn more about the oft-referenced revolutions (re: Eastern Europe in the 20th, the Arab "Spring" in the 21st, etc.) or for historians looking for a light historiography of the topic.
May 2, 2023
Good technical analysis but a bit bland
Learning - 5
Enjoyment - 2
Writing - 3
This is a technical book, and in this capacity it excels. It is extremely thorough and well-researched. It's also somewhat concise. However, I’ve deducted a star because it is often dry and the writing is sometimes unfocused (many details and topics not being tied together).
Overall, it delivers a detailed account of the mid-century revolutions with an emphasis on academic accuracy at the expense of approachable lay narratives.
Learning - 5
Enjoyment - 2
Writing - 3
This is a technical book, and in this capacity it excels. It is extremely thorough and well-researched. It's also somewhat concise. However, I’ve deducted a star because it is often dry and the writing is sometimes unfocused (many details and topics not being tied together).
Overall, it delivers a detailed account of the mid-century revolutions with an emphasis on academic accuracy at the expense of approachable lay narratives.
October 10, 2013
As a textbook, this is quite deliberately and unashamedly didactic. However, like all good teachers, Sperber credits the reader with some intelligence, and takes him or her along for a very interesting ride, with some great wry asides.
The social positioning of the Revolutions is excellent, and Sperber manages to cover very well the differing national responses - including the extraordinary intricacies within the sprawling Empire of the Hapsburgs.
Well worth it.
The social positioning of the Revolutions is excellent, and Sperber manages to cover very well the differing national responses - including the extraordinary intricacies within the sprawling Empire of the Hapsburgs.
Well worth it.
February 23, 2013
For all you "Forty-Eight Feemers" out there, look not further than this succinct and adorable text. The sloppy maps (wall-eyed cartographers should be banned from the sport) and dreary vampire throat target cover color aside, everything and anything you might possibly want to know about 1848 is here.
May 24, 2013
fascinating introduction to a moment in history of which I had little conception, beyond its difficulty and complexity. the writing is clear and arguments sound; Sperber's work is very well researched. I was inspired to study the revolutions upon hearing the Arab Spring compared to it. Even if considered a failure, both 1848 and Arab Spring accomplished something, even if not its intended goals.
February 2, 2015
This book was what i needed it to be--a basic and contemporary overview/analysis of the European revolutions of the mid-19th century. Good, solid info, academic but not obfuscatively dense in the verbiage, lots of great endnotes if you (like I) want to chase down some further reading on specifics.
October 29, 2013
Excellent overview, not only of the Revolutions, but also of the socioeconomic structure of the first half of the century. Really quite good.
March 28, 2014
This is an excellent and very readable history of a complex period, and one that is all the more relevant in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews