Location: Western and Central Europe
 |
| Cheering revolutionaries in Berlin after fighting in March 1848 |
In central and western Europe, poor harvests in 1846-1847 had resulted in appalling hardship for peasantry. Combined with nationalist frustrations at the seeming impossibility of political change, this produced an astonishing outbreak of revolutionary movements in 1848 that touched almost all parts of Europe. In France, it led to the overthrow of the monarchy of Louis-Philippe and the establishment of the Second Republic.
In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a more obviously nationalist series of uprisings almost overthrew Habsburg power to set up a number of new, ethnically based states. In the end the existing regime won out by offering concessions to the Hungarians, the most significant non-German component of the empire. They established the "Dual Monarchy", in which the ruler was emperor in Austria, but king of a theoretically separate Hungarian state. Popular uprisings in Italy and Germany, which seemed to promise statehood, were similarly premature, and ended in brutal suppressions.
No comments:
Post a Comment