Petitions and the Social Context of Political Mobilization in the Revolution of 1848/49: A Microhistorical Actor-Centered Network Analysis

Summary

A great part of the political movement in the Revolution of 1848 took place in the form of group and mass petitions. The National Assembly in Frankfurt, the first national German parliament, received 17,000 petitions from more than three million people. A great number of petitions, analysed by German scholars such as Best, dealt with the question of a liberal market economy, with problems resulting out of the developing process of industrialization, and with protective duties. The petitions expressed different group interests, articulated by craftsmen, merchants, entrepreneurs, and workers, who responded to current economic and social restraints. Another complex of petitions formulated requests regarding the constitution, the liberalization of the political system, or the organization of education, especially the separation of church and state. Another large mass of revolutionary petitions was addressed to the rulers or the ruling bodies of the different German states and was concerned with regional conflicts, and the adoption of ideas that were developed at national level.

Until now, these petitions have been analysed as the product of a collective body, and the signatories of these petitions have been identified through the names of the groups that were given at the head of the petitions. The assumption was that the information and social selfdefinition of the titles represented the actual social groups that issued these petitions. Due to the informational poverty of the sources, which usually only contained a handwritten name, surname, and locality, researchers were not able to reconstruct the social and cultural context of the petitioners.