1 Modern Revolutions in Comparative PerspectiveJan Plamper

2 Week 9: Nineteenth-Century RevolutionsIndustrial Revolution Revolutions of 1830 Revolutions of 1848 Paris Commune of 1871

3 (1) Industrial RevolutionEric Hobsbawm in The Age of Revolution: Europe, (1962): ‘Dual Revolution’ = French + Industrial Revolutions interdependent: rise of entrepreneurial class (bourgeoisie) unthinkable without political, individualistic freedoms

4 (1) Industrial RevolutionSnapshot: Claude Monet, Saint- Lazarre Train Station (1877)

5 (1) Industrial RevolutionRevolution in travel, commerce, notions of speed and time. from Ancient Romans until early 19th c.: Europeans hitch four horses to chariots/stagecoaches; travel = difficult, distances seem long railway travel changed this: ‘voyages’ become ‘trips’, commerce transformed

6 (1) Industrial Revolution‘You can’t imagine how strange it seemed to be journeying on thus, without any visible cause of progress other than the magical machine, with its flying white breath and rhythmical, unvarying pace. I felt no fairy tale was ever half so wonderful as what I saw’ (Fanny Kemble, English actress)

7 (1) Industrial RevolutionNotions of time transformed – literally: trains that left London were scheduled to arrive at their destinations according to London time, which came to be kept at royal observatory in Greenwich  ‘railway time’ (1847), later Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

8 (1) Industrial RevolutionPrecondition – agricultural revolution: enclosures (rather than open, communal fields) new crops, new field rotation system  increased crop yields (in 1700 each person engaged in farming in England produced enough food for 1.7 people, in 1800 for 2.5 people); move from subsistence farming to commercial agriculture general population growth rural poor, landless labourers  manpower for factories, industrialisation, urbanisation

9 (1) Industrial Revolutionif in 1750 e.g. British population predominantly employed in agriculture in 1850: industry technological innovations: steam engine  iron; spinning jenny, water frame  cotton industry; railroads  momentous consequences: population growth seemed infinite; majority of Europe’s population no longer engaged in subsistence farming; map of Europe redrawn: Britain = most powerful; end of 19th c.: arms race, WW1

10 (1) Industrial RevolutionSociopolitical and environmental consequences: ‘Luddites’: machine-breaking riots mostly by handloom weavers in 1810s urbanisation; environmental consequences social reform movement by factory owners (e.g. Robert Owen) and later in politics: e.g. Factory Act (1833) prohibited factory work by children under nine, Mines Act (1842) prohibited women and children from working underground

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12 (1) Industrial RevolutionSociopolitical and environmental consequences: pressure from workers themselves, emergence of socialism (other -isms: conservatism, liberalism, romanticism, nationalism): early socialists, e.g. Charles Fourier and Joseph Proudhon (‘property is theft’, 1840). Later: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848) genuinely new in wake of industrialisation: workers without skills and tools who had nothing but their labour to sell (= ‘proletariat’)

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14 (2) Revolutions of 1830 ‘Forgotten Revolutions of 1830’ because overshadowed by 1789 and However, worth remembering: following economic crises, in 1830 there were revolutions in: France: Bourbon Restoration ended, liberal revolution, constitutional ‘July Monarchy’ voted into power, crown offered to cousin of former king Belgium: independence from Netherlands

15 (2) Revolutions of 1830 Poland: quest for national independence, suppressed by Russians et al. Italy: quest for independence of Northern Italy from Austria, suppressed by Austrians Greece: nationalist independence movement esp. since 1820s (Philhellenism among British et al. writers), Greek monarchy independent from Ottoman Empire created in 1830 Britain, German lands, Switzerland: popular (worker et al.) disturbances, Great Reform Bill in Britain (1832)

16 (2) Revolutions of 1830 What was distinctive about the revolutions of 1830? unprecedented degree of European interconnectedness because of industrialisation and diplomatic alliance system set up after Napoleon’s fall during Congress of Vienna ( )  also: vulnerability of alliance system (popular unrest because of grain prices in one country  shockwaves in other countries)

17 (2) Revolutions of 1830 What was distinctive about the revolutions of 1830? first nationalist revolutions (important: nationalism was not yet ‘conservative’ but often ‘progressive’ because it sought to overcome territorial boundaries drawn according to old, monarchic European order) politicisation in modern key (participation through protest, parliament etc.) widens, increasing numbers of people from various walks of life politicised

18 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Unprecedented year:revolutions in nearly every European country revolutions with ‘French subconscious’: emulation of French revolutionary tradition end of ‘concert of Europe’, i.e Vienna Congress alliance system 1848: ‘turning point at which modern history failed to turn’  perception: failed revolutions

19 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Causes:long-term: politicisation of increasing numbers of people  e.g. suffrage campaigns long-term: socioeconomic  industrialisation long-term: demands for national autonomy, esp. in Austro-Hungarian Empire short-term: last serious European food crisis in 1846  famine (+ epidemics): 1 million dead

20 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Course – France: in Feb. banquet (fundraiser by bourgeois liberals for expansion of suffrage) closed  demonstrations  National Guard defected  monarchy overthrown, Second Republic proclaimed, bourgeois liberals in power  rebellion of Parisian workers in June  suppressed  military dictatorship until presidential elections in Dec.  Prince Louis Napoleon (nephew of Bonaparte) elected, dictator from 1851, crowned Emperor Napoleon III in 1852

21 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Course – France: ‘Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. […] the nephew for the uncle’ (Karl Marx, 1852)

22 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Course – German lands: many German principalities gave in to liberal demands in wake of Feb. Revolution in France; absolute monarchy overthrown in Prussia in March  liberals meet in Frankfurt Assembly and debate unification of German lands (small-German option without Austrians chosen in March 1849)  Prussian king chosen as constitutional monarch  rejects ‘crown from the gutter’  revolution failed

23 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Course – Austria: most threatened by nationalism because of multinational make-up  revolutions in Austria (Vienna), Hungary (Budapest) and the Czech lands (Prague)  all eventually defeated

24 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Outcomes: mixed – eventually dictatorship and Second Empire in France, but constitution (albeit conservative and with three classes of voters) + peasantry emancipated from feudal dues in Prussia

25 (3) Revolutions of 1848 Outcomes: Main reason for failure in those countries where revolution failed: split between bourgeois liberals (by and large in favour of constitutional monarchy) and more radical democrats (by and large in favour of republics, many in favour of ‘one man, one vote’, some socialist)

26 (4) Paris Commune of 1871 Course: July 1870: Franco-Prussian War begins 2 Sep. 1870: French Second Empire (Napoleon III) capitulates mid-Sep. 1870: Paris refuses to capitulate, besieged by Prussian army for four months 18 Jan. 1871: German Empire proclaimed

27 (4) Paris Commune of 1871 Course: March-May 1871 (72 days): Paris Commune  seen by Marx as socialist revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat alternative view: continuation of state of siege of autumn before, but with elements of social experiment, e.g. self-defense by fighting units composed of armed women

28 (4) Paris Commune of 1871 Course:Commune crushed, 25,000 killed, 40,000 arrested and tried, of 10,000 rebels convicted 5,000 were sent to penal colony in southwestern Pacific Ocean lesson 1 of Paris Commune: power of competing visions of the nation, Paris vs. rest of France lesson 2 of Paris Commune: key levers of state control (army etc.) not to be underestimated; in future revolutions they would first have to be brought under control by revolutionaries

29 (4) Paris Commune of 1871 Paris Commune and communards as foundational myth in leftist imagination: (Trotsky on Paris Commune) (Stalin Society on Paris Commune) (Russia Today on reenactments of Paris Commune) (Noam Chomsky on Paris Commune – Occupy Wallstreet)