Political Developments, 1815 to 1848

This is Unit Ten of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the revolutions of eighteen forty-eight, four procedures, and who won the contest of three against one. Part one ended with Britain reforming in thirty-two rather than fighting. This part is the year everyone else fought, and it pays off the unit's governing idea: three creeds against the rebuilt old order, and a result the anchor calls surprising. A republic with manhood suffrage in Paris, Metternich fleeing Vienna, nations demanded in Prague and Budapest, eight hundred delegates at Frankfurt; then the June Days, a crown refused from the gutter, Russia in Hungary, and a Napoleon made emperor. Then the methods: a belief sorted by the question it answers, Burke and the Manifesto read in three moves each, and the era on one line from Vienna to the coup. By the end you will be able to describe eighteen forty-eight and why it failed. To classify a belief. To read Burke and Marx. To sequence the era. And to state who won.

Five entries on eighteen forty-eight: February in Paris, the Habsburg empire near collapse, Frankfurt's parliament, the June Days and the coup, and why it failed yet changed things anyway.

Barricades, a king fled, a republic.

WC2 0927 February 1848: The Second Republic and Universal Manhood Suffrage

In February eighteen forty-eight Louis-Philippe's crackdown on reform banquets met barricades; soldiers killed protesters, the king fled, and a provisional government of liberals and socialists proclaimed a republic with elections without property restrictions. Women were excluded everywhere. The witness: the Second Republic proclaimed, the July Monarchy ended. Universal manhood suffrage, the first in Europe since seventeen ninety-two.

Metternich flees.

WC2 0928 Vienna, Prague, Budapest: The Habsburg Empire Near Collapse

News from Paris reached Vienna by telegraph, and crowds forced Metternich, dominant since eighteen fifteen, to resign and flee, the witness's account. Peasants demanded the end of feudal dues, workers wages, liberals a constitution, and nationalists in Prague and Budapest demanded nations. One empire, four demands, no army yet ready. Hungary's rising is the witness's Hungarian Revolution of eighteen forty-eight.

Eight hundred delegates and a crown.

WC2 0929 Frankfurt: Eight Hundred Delegates and the Smaller-German Answer

The March Revolution in the German states produced the Frankfurt Assembly, the witness's name, Germany's first elected national assembly, eight hundred delegates by the anchor's count, debating free enterprise against the right to work and a smaller Germany without Austria against a greater one. Smaller Germany won; its constitution offered Prussia's king the crown. The anchor's Frankfurt Congress is the witness's Assembly.

The workshops shut, the workers shot, a Napoleon elected.

WC2 0930 The June Days and Louis Napoleon

The socialists' National Workshops cost too much for the liberals and were shut in June; thousands of Parisian workers died or were imprisoned in the June Days as peasant troops arrived by rail. Louis Napoleon won the presidency on his name. The witness: the coup of fifty-one, Emperor Napoleon the Third in fifty-two. The second democratic experiment ended in an emperor.

Failed in aim, and changed things anyway.

WC2 0931 Why 1848 Failed, and What It Changed Anyway

Coalitions of artisans, students and liberals had no link to the rural majority; kings kept their armies and used them, Russia crushing Hungary for Austria, and Frederick William the Fourth refused Frankfurt's crown from the gutter. Yet feudal dues ended, constitutions spread, and nationalism's power was proved; Austria's constitution of forty-nine was granted and withdrawn by fifty-one. Conservatives then adopted nationalism.

Four procedures: a belief sorted by four questions, Burke read in three moves, the Manifesto read in three moves and a call, and eighteen fifteen to fifty-two between three fixed points.

Four questions sort every case.

WC2 0932 Classifying an Ideology: Conservative, Liberal, Nationalist, Socialist

Four questions sort every belief: what is the source of legitimate order, who should vote, what should the state's borders follow, and who should own the means of production. Conservatives answer tradition, liberals property, nationalists the people, socialists the community. Rapid change is destructive and a legal hierarchy should mirror the social one: conservative. Rights belong to every citizen but the electorate should be restricted to property: liberal. The state should correspond to a people rooted in the soil, defined by language: nationalist. Producers should keep the fruits of their labor and goods be held in common: socialist. A written constitution restricting the king with an elected parliament: liberal. Human nature is depraved and needs king, noble and church: conservative, de Maistre's version. The trap is overlap: before forty-eight liberals and nationalists marched together, and utopians talked like liberals about the right to work; sort by the question, not by who shouted. Romanticism is not a choice; it is a mood that fed nationalism.

Inheritance, patrimony, temperament.

WC2 0933 Reading Burke's Reflections

The Reflections of seventeen ninety make one argument in several forms: liberties are an inheritance, not an abstraction, and a people that forgets its ancestors will not think of its posterity. Read it in three moves. First, the inheritance: from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Right, England has claimed its liberties as an entailed inheritance from its forefathers, to be transmitted to posterity, an estate belonging to the people of this kingdom. Second, the contrast: the framers of the Petition of Right claimed their franchises not as the rights of men, on abstract principles, but as the rights of Englishmen, a patrimony. Third, the temperament: a spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views, and people will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. The anchor adds his arithmetic: twenty-four millions ought not to prevail over two hundred thousand if a constitution were a sum. The distractors are Paine, who answered him with the rights of man, and Wollstonecraft, whom the witness pairs against him. Inheritance and selfish innovation: Burke. Universal rights: his opponent. Read at Fordham's sourcebook.

A thesis, a claim, a prophecy, a call.

WC2 0934 Reading the Communist Manifesto

The Manifesto's first section makes three moves, a thesis about history, a claim about the present and a prophecy, and its last line is a call. First, the thesis, in its opening sentence: the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles, freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, oppressor and oppressed. Second, the claim: modern bourgeois society has simplified the antagonisms, splitting more and more into two great hostile camps, bourgeoisie and proletariat, while modern industry establishes the world market. Third, the prophecy, paraphrased: the bourgeoisie produces its own gravediggers, and its ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of existing conditions. The call, in its own words: the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, they have a world to win, working men of all countries, unite. Read it as a manifesto, a program written for a party in a revolutionary year, not as Capital's analysis. What made Marx different from the utopians is the third move: revolution as necessity rather than persuasion. Read at Hanover College's excerpt.

Vienna, July, February: three fixed points.

WC2 0935 Sequencing 1815 to 1852

Three fixed points: Vienna in eighteen fifteen, the July Revolution of thirty, and February forty-eight. The first gap holds the Holy Alliance's interventions, the second the liberal decade, the third a single year. Wartburg, seventeen, then Carlsbad in nineteen. Spain's coup and the French restoration of Ferdinand, twenty and twenty-three. Greece rises in twenty-one, independent by thirty. The Decembrists, December twenty-five. Young Italy, thirty-one, the year after July. The Reform Bill, thirty-two. The word socialism, thirty-four. The Manifesto, forty-eight, the revolution's own year, then the June Days, Frankfurt's refused crown in forty-nine, the coup in fifty-one and empire in fifty-two. The order reads Vienna, Wartburg, Carlsbad, Spain, Greece, Decembrists, July, Young Italy, Reform, socialism, forty-eight, June, forty-nine, the coup. Two of the anchor's dates are corrected on the witness, Greece to thirty and Prussia's king to Frederick William the Fourth; neither moves the order.

One capstone entry: the contest in rounds, from Vienna to the coup, and the result the anchor calls surprising.

Three fought one; the one absorbed two.

WC2 0936 Three Against One: How the Ideologies Fought and Who Won by 1852

The exam's seventh band asks what the four ideologies were and what happened in eighteen thirty and forty-eight, and the anchor's answer is one contest with a surprising result. After Napoleon the elites rebuilt the old order and gave it a doctrine: conservatism, peace, tradition and stability against the rapid change that had bred the Terror, de Maistre's original sin, Burke's inheritance, and later Gobineau's race. Against it stood three creeds that agreed only on the enemy. Liberals wanted equality before the law, universal rights, a constitution, and a vote restricted to property. Nationalists, born of Romanticism's folk collecting and the Revolution's example, wanted the state to match a people, though no one could say who the people were. Socialists, answering Manchester with a word coined in thirty-four, wanted goods in common, and before forty-eight expected everyone to agree. The contest ran in rounds. The Holy Alliance won the first, crushing Spain's liberals in twenty-three and the Decembrists in twenty-five, and lost only Greece, where cultural sympathy beat principle. July eighteen thirty won the second for liberals in France and Belgium, and Britain reformed in thirty-two rather than fight. Eighteen forty-eight was the third: a republic with manhood suffrage in Paris, Metternich fleeing Vienna, Prague and Budapest demanding nations, eight hundred delegates at Frankfurt writing a smaller Germany. It failed. The June Days set liberals against workers, kings kept their armies, Russia crushed Hungary, Frederick William the Fourth refused a crown from the gutter, and France elected a Napoleon who made himself emperor by fifty-two. Two things changed anyway. Feudal dues ended and constitutions became normal, so the liberals won in slow motion; and nationalism's power was so plain that conservatives took it up themselves, which is unit eleven. Socialism alone got nothing, and Marx's Manifesto, written that year, turned it from persuasion to class war. The exam will not ask which ideology was right; it asks what Burke argued, what Mazzini founded, what the June Days were, why forty-eight failed, each a fact inside this chain. Three fought one; the one absorbed two and left the third to militancy.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe eighteen forty-eight from February's republic through Vienna, Prague and Budapest, Frankfurt's eight hundred, the June Days and the coup, and say why it failed and what it changed anyway. You can classify a belief by order, vote, borders and ownership, with overlap the trap. You can read Burke by inheritance, patrimony and temperament, and the Manifesto by thesis, claim, prophecy and call. You can sequence the era between Vienna, July and February. And you can state the result: three fought one, the one absorbed two, and the third turned militant, which is this unit's one idea. Unit eleven opens on the conservatives who built nations.