European Revolutions of 1848

The general term for a series of democratic and national revolutions that broke out on the European continent in 1848. This series of revolutions can be said to be the largest revolutionary movement in the history of Europe, and its great significance was that it struck at the feudal-despotic systems of European countries.

The European Revolutions of 1848 were the inevitable result of the social, economic and political developments in Europe. At that time, on the one hand, due to the rapid development of the industrial revolution, Europe began to enter the stage of modern mechanical industrial production; with the rapid development of capitalism, the economic strength of the industrial bourgeoisie in various countries had strengthened; but politically, the industrial classes in most of the countries were still in a powerless position or were in the early stages of taking power, and they demanded to win more rights so as to further remove the obstacles to the development of capitalism. On the other hand, most of the European countries were still under feudal absolute rule or under the oppression of other nations; the countries of southeastern Europe, which suffered from foreign oppression, demanded independence; liberalism and nationalism were on the rise in Europe. Coupled with the successive crop failures in various parts of Europe, a Europe-wide economic crisis broke out in 1847, and class contradictions sharpened. As a result of the combined effect of the contradictions in all aspects of European society, revolution could not be avoided.

In January 1848, the revolutionary movement first started in Sicily, then spread to France, Germany and whole lands of Italy, as well as to the Austrian Empire, affecting almost the whole of Europe, with only Russia, Spain and a few countries in northern Europe remaining unaffected. The February Revolution in France was one of the major parts of the wave of revolutions, in which the French people, faced with the misrule of the House of Orléans, succeeded in overthrowing the then King of France, Louis-Philippe, and establishing a republic (the Second French Republic), which instituted universal suffrage. In Central Europe, there were movements such as liberal political reforms and national unification.

At that time, except Britain which had completed its first industrial revolution and had become a bourgeois-capitalist country, other European countries were still under the rule of feudal absolutism. In the face of the surging wave of revolutions in various countries, the feudal monarchs in Europe were greatly alarmed, and the bourgeoisie also feared that the further deepening of the revolution would jeopardize their own vital interests. Various reactionary forces organized counter-attacks, while Tsarist Russia sent troops to various places to help suppress the revolutions and national uprisings. The June Uprising of 1848 in France was brutally suppressed, and by August 1849, the revolutions in all European countries were basically suppressed. Nevertheless, the Revolutions of 1848 caused upheavals in the monarchies and aristocracies of various countries, destroyed the reactionary Holy Alliance and the Vienna System, indirectly led to the unification of Germany and the movement for the unification of Italy, and created the conditions for the further development of capitalism in Europe. The European Revolutions of 1848, though belonging to the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, trained up the working class, and pushed it to enter the stage of history as an independent political force.