A further cause of discontent amongst the populace of Europe against their respective rulers at the time was a general failure to react to the tide of liberalism sweeping across much of the Continent. In the Sicilian uprising, the revolutionaries were reacting to the repressive rule of Ferdinand II, and hence demanded the introduction of a liberal, democratic constitution. The French had experienced repressive rule under one monarch or another for after the Restoration. Unlike some more advanced democracies in Europe, notably Britain, universal suffrage was yet to be introduced- no notions of popular sovereignty existed. Louis-Philippe’s outlaw of political gatherings led to the middle classes holding the Campagne des banquets, intended to provide a legal outlet for popular criticism of the regime. Louis-Philippe remained ignorant of the will of much his country, focusing on supporting section within society, and outlawed these political banquets in February of 1848; the people revolted and the liberal Orleanists turned their backs on the ill-favoured King. The outlawing of political banquets is but one government action that led to popular discontent, it just so happened that it directly resulted in the February revolution. Similar calls for popular participation, for democracy, were heard right throughout Europe; culminating in the forced resignation of Metternich in Austria; in the petition proposed by the citizens of Mannheim, alongside Germanic state-wide petitions, demanding trial by jury and freedom of the press. In the Italian states the revolution was led by intellectuals and agitators who desired freedom from foreign rule, notably Austrian in the north, and a liberal government. This all goes some way to showing this new felt wave of liberalism, this desire for democracy that was sweeping across the Continent. The increasing centralisation of Restoration states in the period preceding 1848 only exaggerated this effect, weakening the power of the European elites, whilst bolstering the spirits of their opposition.
Using data collated by Berger and Spoerer in European Crises and the European Revolutions of 1848, one is given an insight into the real effects of the poor harvests in Europe 1845-48, and in turn what role they played in bringing about the revolution. It is argued that “while ideas and institutions undoubtedly contribute to our understanding of the general preconditions for the upheaval of 1848, they fail to explain the timing, simultaneity or regional distribution of the events”. Instead the revolutions are seen as a direct consequence of the serious shortfall in harvests that shook the Continent 1845-47, leading to widespread famine and hunger riots throughout Europe. Nineteenth century statistician, Ernst Engel, goes so far as to propose that the economic crisis “triggered the bomb” in Europe. Even a cursory examination of the facts revealed in Berger and Spoerer’s study, following the aftermath of poor harvests point to its’ significance in the European revolutions. The first factor key to understanding the importance of economic factors in the outbreak of European revolutions in 1848 is the grain-price shock that hit most European countries in the second half of the 1840s, and the reverberations that were felt afterwards. Around 1850, European lower-class households spent between two-thirds and three-quarters of their income on food products. The bulk of this cost was on grain products and potatoes, rendering households budgets sensitive to price changes of either product. The smaller the overall size of the budget, the greater the sensitivity, as low income households tended to allocate a larger proportion of their budget to food. As a trend, most of Europe experienced a dramatic increase in the price of wheat 1845-47, but by 1848 and the outbreak of revolutions, prices had once again stabilised. The time lag between price-shock and revolution is explained simply by the fact that whilst people face starvation and low incomes with poor harvests, they are physically weak and focused on their day-to-day survival. Once prices stabilise and they recover their strength, having had time to consider their recent trauma, they react to the initial price shock. This all fits in with the events of the 1848 revolution. A propagation of food price increases can be seen in the industrial sector, affecting both business attitudes, in terms of how business spend profits, their decision to keep staff amongst other things, as well as in investment behaviour. It is plausible to presume that a decrease in household demand, as a result of increased prices, would lead to a reduction in investment demand, which would, in turn, lead to an industrial shock as well. The deterioration of financial conditions in the wake of the agrarian crisis of 1845-47 had a sizeable lagged impact on firm failures and investment behaviour, which transmitted the crisis across sectors in the economy, and into the year 1848. The existence of a regional pattern of significant shocks to grain prices and thus to the cost of living in a number of European countries between 1845-47 is illustrated in Table 3. Examination of the table reveals some shocking statistics, confirming the link between the grain crisis and the manufacturing sector, and thus the proliferation of the initial shock into 1848. Data shown in Table 3 shows that all countries that felt an industrial shock, as a result of initial agrarian shock, underwent a revolution as well, excluding the Netherlands. The two European nations that did not experience price shocks, England and Sweden, did not have industrial crisis, and hence did not revolt in 1848. The case for British exceptionalism is supported by C.N. Ward-Perkins’ ‘The Commercial Crisis of 1847’, that claims in the period 1845-47 Britain only experienced price shocks to cotton because of the shortage of raw cotton in the American South. Evidence in the table collated by Berger and Spoerer shows near-perfect regional matches between grain price shocks and revolutions: among the 21 states experiencing revolutionary turmoil, 20 had been hit by an initial grain-price shock between 1845 and 1847. Only Denmark is an outlier. Conversely, of the six countries that did not revolt in 1848, only Norway showed signs of a price shock in the grain market.
Most historians, when examining the 1848 revolutions, point to the rise of ideas, calls for democracy, for liberalism as the leading cause. At most, the economic crisis with the agrarian price shocks of 1845-47 are considered but one of many enabling factors. In view of analysis put forward by Berger and Spoerer, much in the spirit of Marx, this approach severely underestimates the effects of the price fluctuations 1845-48. A more accurate conclusion to be drawn from the available date would be that it was ‘economic misery and the fear thereof, rather than the propagation of ideas, that caused the European revolutions of 1848. Moreover, the institutions in place in each respective country, that is, whether there existed a repressive or fair political regime add little explanation to actual revolutionary activity. What can be said, however, is that in states where a repressive political regime existed, revolution tended to be more violent that in those states where there was a fairer regime; suggesting that the existence of repressive regimes did not in fact trigger revolutionary events, only shape them. Ideology obviously had a large role to play in revolution, but only when paired with economic crisis. Having suffered a sever socioeconomic shock, the European peasants and artisans of the 1840s wanted a change, some kind of alternative vision - “realistic or otherwise” – before they would revolt. An alternative vision they found in the voices of peasant and working class leaders, leaders who appealed to concepts of fairness. Together with townsmen politically discontent with the current system, they called for liberalism and democracy. Unlike the economic crisis of 1816-17, when there was still popular belief that the restoration forces could be beaten, the crisis of 1845-47 happened amid a plethora of political alternative to rule, with a far larger call for immediate action. The likelihood here that revolutionary ideology was a necessary condition for upheaval transcends a narrow economistic approach. Without the critical mass of support, provided as a direct result of the propagation of the price shock of 1845-47, mere revolutionary ideology was of little use. Revolutionaries, attempting to push their newfound ideology in undemocratic, and in some places repressive regimes would not have found a footing without the ‘brawn’ supplied by the discontent masses; they needed violence, or the real fear thereof, for use as a political tool. To surmise, without the economic crisis of 1845-48, which so obviously endangered the economic welfare of so many people and discredited the ancient regime so thoroughly, there would not have been the critical mass necessary to provide support and longevity to these new ideas.
Appendix I
Tables, and the data therein, are taken from Berger and Spoerer, Economic Crises and the European Revolutions of 1848, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 61, No. 2 (June, 2001)
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