Title: Revolutions Of 1848 | Encyclopedia.com
Headings: Revolutions of 1848
Revolutions of 1848
REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
origins and background
the outbreak and spread of revolution
possibilities and problems
confrontations and decisions
struggles and accomplishments
bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Revolutions of 1848
REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
REVOLUTION AND REACTION: 1848
TIMELINE: REVOLUTIONS OF 1848
1839, 1842:
August 1846:
March 1847:
October 1847:
February 1848:
March 1848:
April 1848:
May 1848:
June 1848:
24–26 June 1848:
October 1848:
November 1848:
December 1848:
April 1849:
June 1849:
August 1849:
October 1849:
April 1850:
July 1850:
December 1851:
December 1852:
INITIAL REACTION
CYNICISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Works
Secondary Works
Revolutions of 1848

Content: Important nationalist projects of the 1848 revolutions—the national unification of Italy or Germany, the liberation of Poland, the reorganization or outright destruction of the multinational Habsburg Monarchy along national lines—were not accomplished. Many of the social and economic questions raised in the revolution were not resolved and organizational initiatives were suppressed. A full consideration of the 1848 revolutions must take into account these opposing features—the wide spread of the mid-nineteenth century revolutions and the remarkable political mobilizations accompanying them, but also their ultimate failure. origins and background
The crisis years from 1845 to 1847, leading up to the 1848 revolutions, showed, in extreme form, political, social, and economic tensions that had been mounting for decades. Population growth, increasing across Europe since the 1750s, placed pressure on existing resources. The size of average agricultural landholdings declined, and the number of totally landless rural families increased substantially. Ever more urban craftsmen and shopkeepers were competing for a customer base with, at best, constant purchasing power, as real wages fell. Even university graduates in the Italian and German states as well as the Austrian Empire—less so in France—had difficulty finding employment, because there were too many of them for the available positions. The ultimate response to these difficulties, already apparent in Great Britain, and practiced in continental Europe on a wide scale after 1850, would be the growth of mechanized industry and the spread of a more productive and specialized agriculture, both of these developments made possible by the construction of a rail network. Although, particularly in the 1840s, the regionally scattered beginnings of industrialization in western and central Europe, as well as the first steps in rail construction had occurred, the chief measures taken before 1850 to increase output tended to sharpen social pressures.