19th Century European Revolutions
- After the Congress of Vienna, liberal and nationalist ideas spread easily within the new European political context, and uprisings became common — particularly in regions that also faced underlying socioeconomic problems.
- The 19th century was the century of industrialisation, modernisation, demographic explosion, new means of transportation and communication, and great transformations across other spheres of life.
- It was an age of grandiose changes the world had never witnessed before: growing literacy, rapid urbanisation, shifts in political institutions, the rise of national identity, the flowering of culture, remarkable scientific discoveries, and a sweeping change in lifestyles.
- Such tremendous transformations naturally led to drastic social change, setting the stage for the wave of 19th century European revolutions.
Revolutions of the 1820s
- The first of these revolutions took place in 1820 in Spain.
- A liberal constitution — the Cádiz Constitution — had been agreed upon in 1812, but after the Congress of Vienna, King Ferdinand VII ignored it.
- In 1820, a military uprising led by General Riego sought to restore liberal rule, obliging Ferdinand to accept the constitution.
- In 1823, the Congress of Verona dispatched French soldiers — the “100,000 Sons of Saint Louis” — to restore Ferdinand’s authority and defeat the rebels.
- These liberal ideas quickly spread to Portugal, the Two Sicilies, Sardinia, and some German states, but in all these places the revolts were crushed by the army.
- In 1821, a Greek revolution against Ottoman control fared considerably better, as Greek nationalists appealed to European sympathy for a Christian nation struggling against Muslim dominance.
- With French, British, and Russian backing, Greece finally won its independence in 1829, and by 1832 was recognised as a sovereign nation.
- Liberal agitation began to revive in Britain, France, and the Low Countries by the mid-1820s.
- Liberals sought stronger parliaments, wider protection of individual rights, and the vote for the propertied classes.
- They also wanted commercial legislation favouring business growth — in Britain, this meant attacking the Corn Law tariffs, which protected landlord interests and kept food prices (and hence wages) artificially high.
- Belgian liberals additionally carried a nationalist grievance, since the Treaty of Vienna had placed their country under Dutch rule.
Revolutions of the 1830s
- Liberal concerns fuelled a fresh round of revolution in 1830, sparked by a new uprising in Paris.
- Known as the “July Revolution,” it deposed the ultraconservative Bourbon King Charles X and replaced him with the more liberal-oriented Louis-Philippe I.
- Charles, who favoured absolutism, had attempted to restore the Ancien Régime, but the upper bourgeoisie and many influential liberals opposed him, encouraging the people to rise up — and France became a constitutional monarchy.
- Belgium: The Kingdom of the Netherlands, established after the Congress of Vienna, comprised a southern part (present-day Belgium) that was Catholic and mainly French-speaking, and a northern part (present-day Holland) that was Dutch-speaking and Protestant (Calvinist).
- In 1830, a rebellion began in Brussels, ultimately resulting in Belgian independence in 1831, under a new king, Leopold I, and a liberal regime.
- Following the revolutions of 1820 and 1830, liberal governments spread throughout Europe.
- Only Central Europe, the German and Italian states (with the exception of Savoy), and the empires of Russia, Austria, and Turkey remained absolutist.
- Europe was now divided between a liberal west and a conservative centre and east.
- Russia, in particular, seemed largely exempt from the political currents sweeping the rest of the continent, partly due to the absence of significant social and economic change.
- A revolt by liberal-minded army officers in 1825 — the Decembrist revolt — was suppressed with ease, and a new tsar, Nicholas I, installed a more rigorous system of political police and censorship.
- A nationalist revolt in Poland, part of the 1830 movement, was suppressed with great force.
- Russian diplomatic interests continued to follow largely traditional lines, marked by recurrent warfare with the Ottoman Empire in efforts to gain territory to the south; only after 1850 did the Russian regime seriously reconsider its adamantly conservative stance.
- This conservative pattern could not prevail elsewhere in Europe.
- Scandinavian governments moved toward increasing liberalism by expanding parliamentary power, a development completed by the late 1840s; the Dutch monarchy followed a similar path.
- Elsewhere, the next major step arrived through a fresh series of revolutions in 1848, which would prove to be Western Europe’s final revolutionary round.
Revolutions of 1848
- 1848 was a landmark year in European history, marked by a general outbreak of revolutions and uprisings — historians refer to it as “The Spring of Nations.”
- Building on the factors behind the earlier revolutions, several additional causes can be identified:
- Some of the effects of the previous revolutions were beginning to take hold — for example, in France.
- In countries where absolutism remained strong, the bourgeoisie rose up against it; in countries that already had a constitutional monarchy, radical politicians — usually proletarian, and known as democrats — pushed for greater change within parliamentary government, such as universal suffrage.
- Technological change through industrialisation was creating a new social class — the proletariat.
- Technological change also enabled a wider press, helping ideas spread more quickly to a broader cross-section of society.
- Nationalism was growing stronger across the continent.
- Socialism emerged as a significant force, gaining momentum after Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848.
- Crop failures across Europe in 1846 triggered an economic crisis, causing widespread discontent among both the peasantry and the new working classes.
- The revolutions of 1848 took place across most of Western and Central Europe — including France, the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Ireland, and several German states such as Prussia, Saxony, and Venice-Lombardy — and even extended to parts of South America, such as Brazil.
- Some of these uprisings carried strong nationalist components as well, most notably in the Italian and German territories.
- Several important and lasting changes resulted from the 1848 uprisings:
- Manorialism was permanently abolished throughout Germany and the Habsburg lands, granting peasants new rights.
- Democracy took hold in France, prevailing even under the new empire and despite considerable manipulation, with universal manhood suffrage permanently installed.
- Prussia, though again in conservative hands, nevertheless established a parliament based on a limited franchise, as a gesture toward liberal opinion.
- The Habsburg monarchy installed a rationalised bureaucratic structure to replace localised landlord rule.
- Some feminist agitation surfaced in France and Germany, setting the stage for rapid political evolution after 1850 — a process that would make outright revolution increasingly difficult in the years that followed.
