10 - Cycles of Contention

Summary

THE FIRST MODERN CYCLE

In the winter and spring of 1848, rebellions broke out all over Europe. In parts of the continent, the bad crop yields of the previous years were the main cause, but in other areas, harvests had been improving. In some countries, disputes over the suffrage were the trigger for the agitations, but in others, the vote had already been expanded to the middle class, and in others this became an issue only after agitation erupted. Finally, religious and ethnic cleavages were the source of the struggles in some countries, while in others, no communal conflict was visible. Yet from the start, the uprisings of early 1848 struck observers as a single event of continental importance – what we will call a cycle of contention. Echoes of these events were felt as far away as Latin America (Weyland 2009).

Although revolution first stirred in Switzerland and Italy, eventually spreading to France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the Balkans, the shadow of the first French Revolution chilled the souls of the royal rulers who had returned to power in 1815. That revolution focused primarily on political rights. But as this one gathered force, the social question began to emerge. In his 1847 program for the moderate opposition, Tocqueville foresaw this expansion into the social: “The time is coming,” he prophesied, “when the country will again be divided between two great parties; soon the political struggle will be between the haves and the have-nots; property will be the great battlefield” (1987: 12–13).