Michael Seselja’s Reviews > Revolutionary Spring: Fighting for a New World, 1848-1849 > Status Update

Like most modern historians the author is quite left wing. Conservatives are usually the bad guys. Sometimes it seems that he really sympathises with the radical left of the time.
One might say, well the radical left of the 1840s is probably centre right now! That might have a bit of truth to it but reading accounts of radicals from the time I think many of them would still fit on the far left of the spectrum today.

Chapter 5 done. Some important themes I’m noticing that are relevant today;

1. The revolution always eats itself. The French revolutionaries of 1830 were successful but then overthrown in 1848 by those who felt they hadn’t gone far enough. Not too hard to see this playing out today (JK Rowling is the most obvious example).

2. The left is really keen on rule by the people. Until the people vote against them.

As things ignite across Europe the author wisely begins by ordering events geographically rather than chronologically. As revolutions in one part of Europe affected those in others this is difficult, but he does an admirable job. The reader is given little reminders of events going on in Vienna as Berlin is discussed for example, which helps to focus on one place at a time while keeping the grand narrative in mind.

The author is quite good at painting a picture of events across so many countries in Europe leading up to 1848 without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. I’m finding it more readable than most history books of this length. Or maybe that’s because my attention span is finally improving after years of being nuked by my phone.

This period of history (the mid nineteenth century and the age of revolutions) is particularly interesting to me because you can see modern politics starting to form; socialism, liberalism, nationalism and conservatism are all being defined. This means that the ideological boundaries were a lot more blurred than we’ve been used to for decades. I think there’s a decent parallel to the present day there.

The book starts with a description of the conditions of the poorest of the poor in 19th century Europe and it is very easy to see why socialism became so popular.