"Ideology played relatively small role in the revolutions of 1848" Discuss.

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Malgorzata Wojcik

“Ideology played relatively small role in the revolutions of 1848” Discuss.

Year 1848 is described as “mad year” – mad with fight for freedom. Already its first months, in almost all parts of Europe, brought explosion of aims and aspirations, which were accumulated during the after-congress period. Revolutionary movements spread throughout the whole Europe, apart from Russia, where the system of serfdom did not allow any revolts, and Great Britain, where the reforms were carried out in non-revolutionary channels. Despite the differences in social, economic and political structures of European countries, the revolutions of 1848 were characterised by uniformity, and their ideology was a common denominator.

There were several factors that caused the revolutions. Some believe that the main cause of the revolutions of 1848 was bourgeoisie’s fight against still existing feudalism. it can be partly true, but this interpretation does not explain all the mechanism of the revolt.

First of all - the years of 1845-47, in which an economic crisis occurred. It began with the agriculture problems, which were caused by a poor harvest of potatoes in 1845, followed by crop failure in 1846 and 1847. Agrarian riots occurred in France, there was a “potato revolution” in Berlin, bread-riots in other German cities. Because food prices went up, people stopped buying other goods, and therefore the governments did not have any money to pay off their debts (they borrowed large sums of money for industrial expansion in 1840’s). Another problem in the pre-revolutionary period was unemployment among artisans and workmen – they were loosing battle with modern industry, due to e.g. new machinery and railways, which pushed them to even greater poverty.

No wonder that the revolutions were widely expected and predicted. Because of overall crises, many reforms were needed, most of which had an ideological background.

Nevertheless, the ideology did not play a huge role throughout the whole revolution. Year 1848 can be divided into three periods which were characterised by variable importance of  new ideas of 19th century. The main ideology in opposition to the order established during the Congress of Vienna was often called ‘liberalism’. This name indicates that the primary motive of it was to strive after freedom in contrary to dependence and restrictions forced on societies and individuals by absolute monarchs. Colloquially, all people who were against absolute regime and were after constitution established by nations representativer, were called liberals. They demanded freedom of religion and tolerance, freedom of word, press and societies. They thought that everybody should be equal as far as law is concerned.

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Another 19th century idea was radicalism, which was pretty much the same ideology, with only slight differences: radicals supported republican form of power rather than constitutional monarchy, they wanted common right to vote, they were saying less about freedom of an individual, more about social justice.

At the beginning of the revolutions 1848, the ideology was extremely important. All social classes were in misery, because the outcome of economic changes. Everybody, from peasants to bourgeoisie, believed that liberal reforms will bring changes for better. Without the ideology, the hope for a different life, the revolutions would have been a ...

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