6 - The mid-century revolutions in European history

Summary

The anatomy of a revolution

The origins of the 1848 revolutions are best understood in terms of the coming together of longer- and shorter-term socioeconomic and political causes. A basic precondition for the revolution was the gradual decline in popular standards of living over the previous twenty to twenty-five years. To a great extent, this state of affairs reflected the decline of an agrarian-artisan economy, and its replacement by a more efficient one, characterized by a more productive agriculture, an improved market network, and a growing industrial sector. In central and eastern Europe, these structural changes were accompanied by a gradual movement from a society of orders to a civil society of property owners, involving changes in those property relations, particularly serfdom and the guild system, that hindered the development of a market economy and society. While historians might understand these developments as part of a favorable transition, leading to increased economic growth and higher standards of living, contemporaries had no way of knowing that their troubles were transitional, that after mid-century things would gradually improve. All that could be perceived was the decline, creating a permanent and widespread discontent.

The harvest failures of 1845–46, followed by the recession of 1847, topped off and intensified these long-term changes. Starvation was avoided in continental Europe, although for the poorer, mountainous areas it was a near thing, and for those of modest means, already suffering from the gradual declines in their real income, the years of high food prices meant taking on a heavy burden of debt.