Title: 1848 REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE- NATURE AND IMPACTS | Idea of History
Headings: 1848 REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE- NATURE AND IMPACTS
1848 REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE- NATURE AND IMPACTS
INTERPRETATIONS AND NATURE OF THE REVOLUTIONS –
CAUSES –
Economic Crisis –
State Aggravation –
Demands for National Unification –
COURSE –
‘SPRINGTIME OF THE PEOPLES’
CAUSES OF THE FAILURE –
COUNTER REVOLUTION AND IMPACT OF REVOLUTIONS ON THE POLITICS OF EUROPE –
LEGACY OF THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848 –
Idea of History
-R.G. Collingwood (1946, revised edition 1993). ISBN 0-19-285306-6

Content: Also in this interpretation is an attempt to connect the outbreak and course of the revolution with the social, economic and cultural changes of the preceding decades. CAUSES –
Scholars have unanimously agreed that the revolutions of 1848 were a culmination of a series of crisis- economic, social and political- which occurred in the late 1840s. Price suggests that it is useful to maintain a balance between the background factors—the preconditions and the actual precipitators of revolution. Economic Crisis –
The economic crisis of the years 1845-47 which was combined the features of a pre-industrial subsistence crisis with the sort of overpopulation-under consumption crisis. The impact of poor cereal harvests together with potato blight created conditions of near starvation. There was a rise in food prices in most of Europe, leading to strikes, demonstrations and ‘food riots’ in France and Germany. Employment in urban and rural industries declined as factories collapsed. There was an acute credit crisis and the poorer people were forced to borrow money and incur huge debts. Population pressure on the resources of agriculture, the decline of rural industry and the competitive character of early industrialization had created widespread misery for the poorer classes. It was in this environment that the revolutions of 1848 had occurred.