Growing Pains: Social and Political Upheavals,

1845–1880
 A New Revolution in France
• July Monarchy
– Although the electorate doubled, a small
number of financiers held most of the
power.
– State of economy in 1846 & 1847
• The Revolution of 1848
– Rival public banquets held (rallies were
forbidden)
– Prime Minister Guizot banned these
banquets.
– Barricades in the streets
– Insurgents were proclaiming the Second
Republic.
– King Louis-Philippe fled to London.
– Formation of a provisional government
June 1848: The Turning Point
• Counterrevolution started in
earnest in June 1848.
– Uprisings in Prague crushed
– “June Days” in Paris
• Demise of the Pan-German
Parliament
– Changing winds of reaction
– Role of Austria and Prussia
– Failure of Frankfurt
deputies
June Days
Napoleon III
 The Spread of Revolution

• The French Revolution of 1848

touched off revolutions throughout the
Continent.
– Influence of nationalism
– Spread of liberalism
• Unrest in Germany and Austria
– Western Germany
– Hungary
– Vienna
– Bavaria
– Prussia
– Pan-German Parliament
• Italian Revolts against Austria for
Unification
The Revolutions of 1848
 Radicalism and The
Communist Manifesto

European conservatives
concerned that 1848
revolutions might become like
the French Revolution
Would street violence
develop into a larger
war?
Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels
The Communist
Manifesto
 Reaction

• In France, revolution grew more radical.

– Work for the unemployed
– The abolition of slavery
• Revolutions were primarily urban.
– The peasantry was resistant to changes.
– A conservative reaction formed as revolutions
struggled.
• Austria
– To maintain power, authorities played different
nationalities against one another.
Revolutionary End in Austria and Prussia

• Martial law and censorship in Vienna

Austria • Hungarian Revolt: Russia gets reputation (among British) as ‘bad

cop’ of Europe

• In June, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV dismisses the liberal cabinet that

Prussia
had served March.
• Martial law declared
• New conservative constitution

• Fundamental Rights of the German People

Pan-German • Proposed unified German state that included much of Austrian
Empire

Parliament • Habsburgs refused to let go of empire.

• Prussian king refused German crown.
 Results in Italy and France

Failed Revolutions in Italy

• Austrians reoccupied Milan and Venice
• Roman Revolution against Pope failed
• Rise of Giuseppe Garibaldi

Rise of Louis-Napoleon in France

• Louis-Napoleon seen as a joke prior to winning election in 1848
• Initially governed as a moderate
• 1851 Assembly refused to amend constitution to allow him to run
again
• Louis-Napoleon staged coup d'état and overthrew Second Republic
• Declared himself Emperor Napoleon III, and France entered Second
Empire
June 1848: The Turning Point
• Counterrevolution started in
earnest in June 1848.
– Uprisings in Prague crushed
– “June Days” in Paris
• Demise of the Pan-German
Parliament
– Changing winds of reaction
– Role of Austria and Prussia
– Failure of Frankfurt
deputies
 1848 in Russia and Britain

Russia
• No significant political
disruption

• Impact of 1832 Reform Act

Britain
• Chartist movement stirred fears
of a revolution, but one did not
materialize.
 Victoria
• Parliamentary rule: prime minister is leader of largest party in Parliament
• Victorian Age
– Britain becomes the most powerful nation in the world
– Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
– Victorian values
 A Famine in Ireland

• poor Catholic peasantry 80% of the population who support Anglo-Irish

(Protestant) gentry: no hereditary loyalty or feudal ties (as in England itself)
• "a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien established Protestant
church, and the weakest executive in the world” --Disraeli
• Role of the potato (no other crop could feed adequately)-- Population
explosion
• Potato Famine of 1845–1849 : fungus led to rotting crops.
• One-tenth of the population died from famine.
• Those most severely live in west and south, where Irish language (not English)
dominant
• "The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the
Famine:” many convinced the English are trying to kill them
• Irish lands exported food even during the worst years of the Famine
• Over a million emigrated, mostly to the United States.
• permanently changed the island's demographic, political, and cultural
landscape
 …and eviction

‘Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes in one day and
set adrift on the world, to gratify the caprice of one who, before God and man,
probably deserved less consideration than the last and least of them ... The
horrid scenes I then witnessed, I must remember all my life long. The wailing
of women—the screams, the terror, the consternation of children—the
speechless agony of honest industrious men—wrung tears of grief from all
who saw them. I saw officers and men of a large police force, who were
obliged to attend on the occasion, cry like children at beholding the cruel
sufferings of the very people whom they would be obliged to butcher had they
offered the least resistance. The landed proprietors in a circle all around—and
for many miles in every direction—warned their tenantry, with threats of their
direct vengeance, against the humanity of extending to any of them the
hospitality of a single night's shelter ... and in little more than three years,
nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in their graves.’
Thomas Nulty, Bishop of Meath, 1848
 Genocide?

• As the Famine progressed, it

became apparent that the
government was using its
information as an opportunity
to facilitate various long-
desired changes within Ireland.
These included population
control and the consolidation of
property through various
means, including emigration
‘Never again should a people starve in a
world of plenty.’
 Elsewhere in the British empire:
Expansion in Asia and ‘The Great Game’
 The ‘Great Game’
• As British gain and
maintain control of India,
their main motivator is
keeping it—i.e. keeping
Russians from expanding
in the region.
• ’Great Game’: Britain
seeks to control
Afghanistan and Tibet at
expense of Russia
 Revolution in India (1857–1858)

• British East India Company ruled much of

India.
– India was center point for British Empire
– Army was made up largely of Indian
troops
• The Mutiny
– Large-scale troop refusal to use
cartridges for new rifle
– Troops arrested
– Revolt
– Role of the British press
– British brutally put down the revolt
• East India Company dissolved
– India officially became part of the
empire.
British India, 1857–1880
The Crimean War, 1853–1856
 The Crimean War: A Number of Firsts

• Journalism from the Front Lines

– (the telegraph and newspaper
press)
• Battlefield Nursing and Surgery
Nikolai Pirogov:
.founder of field surgery;
first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a .field
operation (1847)
. introduced triage and various kinds of
surgical operations,
.developed technique of using plaster casts
to treat fractured bones.
• Florence Nightingale: founding of the
Red Cross
– improving sanitary practices
Battlefield Nursing
 Abolitionism in Britain

• 1807: Britain outlawed the slave

trade.
• 1833: Britain outlawed slavery
throughout most of the British
Empire.
– Spurred by opposition to
slavery from religious
dissenting and evangelical
groups
– British East India territories
excepted
• Slavery continued in other
European territories and the
United States.
 Disraeli and Gladstone
• The Victorian era was
dominated by two
politicians:
– Disraeli
(Conservative)
– Gladstone
(Liberal/Whig)
Di Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Risorgimento

• Dominant Italian political personality from Piedmont-

Camillo di Sardinia
• Liberal economic policy
Cavour • Allied with France against Austria

Giuseppe • Republican veteran from Roman revolt

• Led group of volunteers known as the Red Shirts
Garibaldi • Took Sicily and Naples for Piedmont

• “Rebirth” or unification of Italy

Risorgimento • Complete with addition of Venice in 1866 and Papal
States in 1870
Unification of Italy, 1859–1870
Bismarck and the Formation of the German
Nation

Descendant of Prussian aristocrats

(Junkers)
Otto von Bismarck Seasoned diplomat who sought to
unify Germany on Prussia’s terms
Unification by “Iron and Blood”

Power politics – focus on Prussia

above all else
Realpolitik War with Denmark over Schleswig-
Holstein (1864)

Prussia crushed Austria in seven

Austro-Prussian War weeks.

(1866) Austria lost Venice to Italy.

Austria became Austria-Hungary.
 Turmoil in France

Napoleon III’s Expansion

• Vietnam (1858)
• Mexico (1860s)

The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871)

• Fought as a result of rising tensions between France

and Prussia – and Bismarck’s shrewd manipulations
• French army less efficient
• Prussians crushed French at the Battle of Sedan
• Paris besieged
 German Unification

United German • Non-Austrian German regions unified under

one leader
Reich declared • Prussia’s King Wilhelm I became emperor
at Versailles in (Kaiser).
• Bismarck becomes chancellor.
January 1871

• Next ten years: peaceful consolidation of

power
German • Junkers
Society • Kuturkampf (“culture struggle”)
• Social Democratic Party
Unification of Germany
Two new (revised) empires
THE GREAT REFORMS of Alexander II (r. 1855-1881)

• Serfdom (abolished 1861 )

• Legal (vastly improved court system)
• Modernization of army and navy (+ universal
military service)
• Reform of local government (zemstvo)
• Educational reforms
• Improvement of status for most nationalities
• Economic modernization
• Lightened censorship
Two different images of emancipation
 The Paris Commune and the Reaction

• France devolved into civil war.

– French Third Republic declared
– Elections announced for new National
Assembly
– However, the city of Paris rejected this.
• Paris Commune
– Paris rose up against Third Republic and
Germans.
– Sought to re-establish revolutionary
ideals
– Third Republic under Aldolphe Thiers
attacked the city.
– Paris radicalized
– “Communards” executed
• Commune became a symbol for socialist
movements moving forward.
– Republican Assembly emerged as the
dominant power in France.
Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame des Otages (and Lourdes,
and Vatican I: first Catholic Church Council since 16 th
Century)
 Centralization and Language

• Europe now made up of nation-states

• Even so, dialects and regional languages
– Italy
– France
• Urban (more accurately, RADICAL)
perceptions of the peasantry
– Irrelevant
– Uncultured
– Disinterested in national issues
– Marx: “idiocy of rural life”
Europe in 1878
Railway network in Europe ca. 1880
 Industrial Growth
• Perceptions regarding urban
and rural life fueled by
industrialization
– Iron and steel
– Railways
• Investment Banks
– Development of more
sophisticated financial
institutions
• Continuing Urbanization
– Large increases in
population
– Public health
 Fin de siècle Budapest and other great
European cities

• Population goes up
FIVE TIMES from
1848 to 1914
• Declining death rate
all over Europe
• Shared culture all over
Europe: Edinburgh,
Vienna, St. Petersburg,
Glasgow, Bucharest…
 Cities and the Middle Class

• Cities centered on middle classes

– Cultural centers
– Role of dress and clothing as social demarcation
– Commercialism
– Gas lighting : now safer to go out at night
• Gendered ideal of public versus private
– Not fully followed in practice
– Middle-class women largely prevented from
working: distract them with shopping
Life in the City
 New Centers of Culture

• New centers of commercialism

Department • All manner of goods for sale
Stores • Role of advertising

• Made of steel and glass

The Crystal • Constructed for the 1851 World
Palace Exhibition to showcase Britain’s
industrial and imperial might
Interior of Galeries Lafayette
The Crystal Palace
 Challenges to Bourgeois Culture

• Middle class
displacing aristocracy
• Major challenges
– Bohemian critiques
– New radicalism in
political parties:
Marxism and
anarchism
The Assassination of Alexander II, March 1881
 Gender and Sexuality

• Status of Women
– Feminism and Jeanne Deroin
– Women and socialism
– Mill’s call for social and political equality
• Rethinking of Sexuality
– New forms of regulation and expression of
sexuality
– Origins of modern understandings of
homosexuality
The Adultery Novel: why NOW?
 Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Fontane, Effi Briest
Alas, La Regenta
 Revolutions in Science

• Biological revolutions of the nineteenth

century
• Charles Darwin
– On the Origin of Species (1859):
evolution by natural selection
– The Descent of Man (1871): evolution of
humans from other animals
– Reaction
– European ideas on race – Social
Darwinism
• Louis Pasteur
– Father of modern pathology
– Carried out experiments that
demonstrated the role of microorganisms
in disease
– Developed pasteurization
Killing bacteria in food = survival for those
who eat (and drink) it
 Religious Backlash

• Lourdes
– Marian vision
– Healing powers
• Pope Pius IX
– Convenes first Church
Council since the
sixteenth century:
Vatican I
– Papal infallibility
 New Artistic Directions

• Realism: modern society required critical

examination
– Painting
– Literature
• Realism in Russia
– Fyodor Dostoyevsky
– Leo Tolstoy
Realist Art
 Reaction to Realism

Continued Popularity of Emergence of Science Painting Poets, such as

Romanticism Fiction Baudelaire
Literature Impressionism as a reaction to Challenges established norms
Opera: romantic and photography in poetry
nationalistic Forerunners to modernism in
literature
Antirealist Art
 Conclusion

The changing scope in literature and art

mirrored the disorientation felt by many
Europeans.

Despite differences among many groups, there

was a shared belief in the high cost of social
changes.

In the wake of failed revolutions, there was a

continued thirst for the “new.”