3 - The outbreak of revolution

Summary

Preceding the revolution: (1) the economic crisis

It was quite clear to contemporaries that the economic crisis of the years 1845–47 was the precursor to and precondition for the revolution of 1848. Historians have seconded this judgment, but can add to it three important points. What happened in 1845–47 was not an isolated event but part of a broader range of economic difficulties, occurring over a fifteen-year period, running from the early 1840s through the second half of the following decade. Within this broader period, 1845–47 were particularly difficult years, because they saw the interaction of three separate but interrelated crises: a run of very poor harvests; a trade cycle downturn, what would today be called a recession; and a financial and banking panic, reflecting the first two difficulties, but also showing the insufficiency of existing financial institutions. Finally, both the broader crisis and the greater problems of 1845–47 are best understood as a crisis of transition, as part of the movement towards expanded industrial production and a market-oriented agriculture, which would resolve the long-term economic difficulties of the first half of the nineteenth century. This last point is particularly well suited to historians' hindsight, but was no consolation to those who were starving, cold, unemployed, or heavily in debt at the time. Unaware of the prospect of future decades of economic expansion, they were ready to take violent and drastic action to improve their condition.

Problems of food shortages began with mediocre harvests in the early 1840s.