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Chapter 21
1830-1850 - Economic Advance and Social Unrest
As the title indicates, the years 1830 to 1850 saw the Industrial Revolution spread from Great Britain to the
continent with the railroad engine being the new symbol of the Industrial Revolution. But many economic
groups still opposed the inevitable. And as society changed in ways that nobody could have foreseen, the
years brought increasing anxiety for entrepreneurs who needed to make decisions vital to their endeavors, as
well as industrial workers and artisans who lived with the fear of unemployment and the peasants who also
lived in fear, mostly of sufficient food supplies. All these factors would culminate in the major unrest
known as the Revolutions of 1848.
Moving Towards an Industrial Society
As we saw in Chapter 15, the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the eighteenth century with the
advent (coming) of the textile and iron industries. England had the natural resources, sufficient capital
(money), technological expertise and spirit, a growing food supply (from a dynamic Agricultural Revolution),
domestic mobility (especially canals and natural rivers) and both strong foreign and domestic markets for
mass-produced textiles. As British factories and production grew, new markets opened up in North America
– both the United States and Canada (competing with incipient or growing industries) - and the newly
independent Latin American nations. The Napoleonic Wars had destroyed the French Atlantic trade and it is
important to remember that Great Britain commanded the world markets from India to Asia to the Americas
and much of Europe.
However by the 1830s, Belgium, France and Germany were catching up and the use of the steam engine
was applied in railroads, factories and mines. In the Ruhr and Saar Basins in Germany, coke was rapidly
replacing charcoal in iron and steel production. But it must be remembered that, as manufacturing centers
grew – Lyons, Rouen and Lille in France and Liege in Belgium – with the new techniques and factories,
most manufacturing still took place in the countryside. And it meant that by 1850, the peasant and the urban
artisans were still more important than industrial factory workers.
Population and Migration
Population Growth
1831
1851
FRANCE
32.5 million
38.5 million
GERMANY
26.5 million
33.5 million
GREAT BRITAIN
16.3 million
20.8 million
As industrialization spread, the population of
Europe continued to grow. More and more
people were living in the cities and by midcentury one half of the population of England
and Wales and one quarter of the population
of France and Germany were living in urban
areas. Eastern Europe, by contrast remained
overwhelmingly agrarian.
The growth of urban areas as a result of
migration from the country caused numerous problems for cities. Resources such as housing, clean water,
sewers, food supplies, heating and lighting were inadequate to non-existent. Slums sprang up with
unspeakable filth, rampant disease, crime and human misery beyond description. And the countryside was
not much better. The Enclosure Movement in England began the process of redistribution of the land.
During the French Revolution, peasants outright received their own lands they once worked for the
aristocracy. The emancipation of serfs in Prussia and Austria in 1848 commercialized landholding but failed
to create a new independent peasantry.
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What happened was that in England peasants were driven off the land while on the continent peasants did
not have enough land to make the agricultural innovations necessary to support themselves or produce
enough surplus to make profits. It is also important to note that the late emancipation of the serfs in
Germany and Russia slowed the pace of industrialization because it made the movement of peasants to the
cities (where they formed the bulk of growing industrial workforces) extremely difficult.
The Irish Potato Famine
In spite of scientific advancement and industrialization, poor harvests still haunted Europe and the worst of
these was the Irish Potato Famine of 1845 to 1847. Ireland was a poor land and most of the farmland was
owned by English landlords who lived in England and collected rents from small Irish farmers who tilled
the land that was once theirs. To make ends meet during the eighteenth century, the Irish were able to make
the potato (from South America via the Colombian Exchange) not only a staple food crop but a more efficient
means of raising cash to pay their landlords since more potatoes could be grown per acre than almost any
grain. But then in 1845, a mysterious fungus wiped out the potato crop - and again in 1848.
The mistake which had been driven by necessity was that when an agricultural economy becomes dependent
on one a single crop, it becomes vulnerable, if that one crop fails. The result in Ireland was that the farmers
could not pay their rents and were thrown off their farms by the landlords. Starvation and disease spread and
tens of thousands died. What made matters worse was that the English masters of Ireland continued to
export grain and potatoes from Ireland to maintain their profits even when it meant the deaths of more than
a million people from starvation. Another million people fled Ireland (most to the United States and some to
England) to escape the disaster and much of Ireland was depopulated.
The Potato Famine marked a watershed in Anglo-Irish relations because the intense anger created towards
the British directly led to increasing nationalist agitation which demanded independence for Ireland.
Nevertheless, when migrating Irish arrived in America or Britain, they often found jobs in the expanding
factories of the Industrial Revolution.
The Transportation Revolution
The growth of railroads also contributed to increased European migration. Although canal construction and
steamboats had hastened the early spread of the Industrial Revolution, the railroad locomotive would
become the icon which embodied (representing something in a clear and obvious way) the most dynamic
application of the revolution. In 1815, George Stephenson, a self-educated engineer and inventor, invented
a high-pressure steam engine and put it into a locomotive. Fourteen years later, in 1829, his steam
locomotive, the Rocket, won a contest by reaching an astonishing 28 miles per hour (45 kph). Even though
it was lighter and more efficient than Watt’s engine, Stephenson’s steam engine was still too heavy for
many ship applications. But by 1850, steam engine technology was lighter, more fuel efficient and was
quickly catching up with eventually eclipsing the clipper ships in oceanic travel.
The bottom line was that – as the Industrial Revolution produced better steam engines - trains could carry
far more cargo than horses or canals and that drastically reduced transportation costs. Transportation
networks began link mines with industrial centers and industrialized nations with one another. The first
English Railway, the Stockton and Darlington, opened in 1825. By 1830, another line had been built
between Manchester and Liverpool and was carrying several hundred passengers a day. By 1850, the
English had built over 6,000 miles of railroad track; the French 1,800 miles; and the various German states
almost 3,500 miles. Such staggering growth in turn caused another revolution as people began to ride the
railroad and by the middle of the nineteenth century millions were riding the rails annually.
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The Emergence of a Wage-Labor Force
In the early nineteenth century, no single kind of labor force existed. The labor forces included factory
workers, domestic craftsmen (as in the Putting-out System), household servants, miners, farmers and
farmworkers, countryside peddlers, soldiers and sailors and railroad workers. Some workers were well paid
and well off and others were referred to as the laboring poor who had jobs but could barely make a living.
One of the most dreadful examples of these latter, were the women and children who worked under terrible
conditions in Welsh mines. Nevertheless, the second two decades of the nineteenth century saw factory
workers and artisans create a wage labor force which was a commodity of the labor marketplace. This
process has been termed Proletarianization.
In simple terms, Proletarianization was the social process whereby people moved from being employers
to being employed as wage laborers by an employer. In this process, artisans gradually lost ownership of
production and peasants left their land to move to the city. In both cases, they contributed their labor for a
wage. In Marxist terms, proletarianization is seen as a downward spiral of social mobility. In other
words, workers became socially unable to change employment or better themselves in a proletarian wage
setting; or said another way, they were at the mercy of their employers.
Industrialization and the factory system created a revolutionary impact on society as it forced people to
adjust to new patterns of family and working life. We shall see in emerging industrial societies, how the
proletariat (the working class) did not initially benefit from the Industrial Revolution, but how, over time,
both the working and middle classes came to share in the wealth and comforts brought by the Industrial
Revolution as nations worked to build more equitable and just societies.
Industrialization then changed the way people worked, earned a living and lived out their daily lives. The
basic building block of society continued to be the family, but families were radically transformed. Before
factories and offices and other kinds of industrial workplaces, family members worked together at home or
on the farm for the welfare of the family group. But after the Industrial Revolution, the family dynamic was
reshaped by moving economic production outside the home and creating a sharp distinction between
working life and family life. These changes were often gradual, as extended family economies persisted into
the Industrial Revolution, as fathers, mothers and children pooled their wages and sometimes even worked
together in factories.
In the nineteenth century, it became more and more difficult for master craftsman or skilled artisans [both
terms refer to skilled manual labor workers] to maintain control over their trades. The French Revolution had
outlawed such organizations and economic and political liberals opposed labor guild organizations and
worked to have the government ban them. Master craftsmen also found themselves under increased pressure
from larger, more competitive and heavily capitalized establishments or from industrialization (i.e., factories)
itself. In many workshops, many skilled artisans began to follow a practice – known in France as Confection
– whereby goods such as shoes, clothing and furniture were produced in standard sizes rather than by
special orders for individual customers.
The practice of Confection led to increased division of labor as each artisan produced a smaller part of a
relatively uniform final product. Thus less skill was required of each artisan and so the master craftsmen
tried to pay less to the artisans because their talents were less valuable. These tactics led to work stoppages
and strikes and the problem was made worse when migrants from the country were willing to take the same
jobs for the reduced pay. It also made it more difficult for artisans to gain the skills necessary to become
master craftsmen. From the 1830s onward, these artisans took the lead in one European country after
another in trying to protect their social and economic interests.
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Chartism
In the mid-1830s, many British workers linked the solution of the economic difficulties to a program of
political reform known as Chartism. In 1836, William Lovett (1800-1877) and other radical artisans formed
the London Working Men’s Association. In 1838, the group issued the Charter, a document which
demanded six reforms: universal male suffrage, annual elections to the House of Commons, the secret
ballot, equally sized electoral districts and the abolition of property qualifications for and the payment of
salaries to members of Parliament. For more than ten years the Chartists, who were always loosely
organized, agitated for their reforms and on three occasions the Charter was presented to Parliament which
refused to pass any of its reforms.
Petitions with millions of signatures were sent to the House of Commons. Strikes were called and the
Chartists published their own newspaper, The Northern Star. Fergus O’Conner (1794-1855), a powerful
speaker and the most famous Chartist, made speeches across Great Britain (He was so popular that many
Chartists named their children after him).
Despite all of this, Chartism failed as a national movement mostly because its ranks were split between
those who advocated violence and those who favored peaceful tactics. On the local level however, Chartists
won several victories and controlled many city councils including Leeds and Sheffield. Economic times also
grew better in the early 1840s and Chartist demonstrations in 1848 failed. But it is important to note that in
the long run several of the Chartist reforms were eventually enacted into law and Chartism also set an
example of generally peaceful methods of seeking economic and social redress by artisans and laborers.
The Family and the Industrial Revolution
The Factory system modified but did not destroy the working class family. Fathers left home to work but
remained the head of the family. In fact, some English factories allowed a father, as head of his family, to
employ this wife and children as his assistants. In both Britain and France, families would move near a
newly built factory so the family could work as a unit in the factory. Still for the proletariat class, these
accommodations did not offset long hours, strict discipline and low wages. Moreover, as newer machines
were invented, less skill was needed to operate them and so more unmarried women and children were
employed because they would work for less money. This was one of the major causes of unemployment in
the early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, as time went by, more men moved upwards in the system and
received both higher wages and more status. These new middle class men now came to be seen as the
“bread winners” and in many homes they no longer did chores which were delegated with other menial
tasks to women and children.
In upper and middle class families (i.e., the bourgeoisie), men gained enormous prestige in the family and the
community at large. Many professionals (doctors, lawyers, various bureaucrats, bankers and businessmen)
adopted a strong work ethic even though they now had free time for shorter working hours, relaxation and
vacations. They also sought self-improvement, especially reading or attending lectures. Moreover, they
demanded the same work ethic of their factory employees.
Such attitudes resulted in a whole new ideal of respectability and morality which was reflected in churches,
schools and factories. Gambling, boxing matches, socializing at bars and staged dog or cock fights were
outlawed by the rising respectability of the middle class. Lower class workers who could not afford middle
class lifestyles often resented the hypocrisy of such attitudes and many adopted “Holy Monday” ideals
(starting the work week on Tuesday) and fought for social equality with the more well to do.
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Like men in pre-industrial times, women worked long hours. Agricultural and Cottage industries demanded
as much. But within the context of working in the home, it was easy for women to adopt the dual role of
coworker with her husband and mother to her children. When women were forced to move into the factory
or office, however, the family dynamic changed. In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, factory
owners allowed husbands to hire their wives (and children) as assistants but by the late 19th century Middle
Class Morality expected that women stay at home. Poor women had no choice; they had to work to survive.
Single middle class women sometimes worked in limited professions such as school teaching; married
women did not.
By the 1820s, unmarried women rapidly became employed in factories where fewer skills were needed such
as tending machines. Such “opportunities” created a paradox for women because many new employment
opportunities opened up but the skills needed were lowered. Many women left factory employment when
they married; many widows conversely joined the factory labor force to make ends meet after the deaths of
their husbands. At any rate, as the Industrial Revolution spread, it transformed the family from the chief unit
of both production and consumption to the chief unit of consumption.
Nevertheless, by midcentury female factory employees accounted for less than half of all employment for
women. In France, the largest group of employed women continued to be as farmers. In England, the largest
group of employed women was domestic servants. Throughout Western Europe, domestic cottage industry
(Putting-out-System) employed many women in such employment as lace making, glove making, garment
making and other kinds of needlework. In almost all cases, women were exploited and their working
conditions were harsh, whether they working in homes or sweatshops (a factory or workshop, especially in the
clothing industry, where workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under substandard conditions).
The ubiquitous charwoman [a women employed to do odd chores, hard cleaning and washing around a house]
was a common sight across Europe and a symbol of the exploitation of poor women.
Early Industrialization created a terrible evil in Child Labor. Children had worked with their families in
pre-industrial times but that was in the context of the family. In the early days of industrialization, children
were taken away from home and parents to work long hours in factories. They were exploited and even
physically mistreated. The tragedy was that the poor were so poor that they often could not survive without
their children working. The English Factory Act of 1833 forbade the employment of children under the
age of nine, limited the workday of children aged nine to thirteen to nine hours a day and required factory
owners to pay for two hours of education a day for working poor children.
In 1847 – in response to demands by adults to limit working hours – Parliament mandated a ten-hour
workday. By our standards, it was long but in the nineteenth century it allowed parents and children more
time together as a family unit. Ultimately, the wage economy meant that families were less closely bound
together than in pre-industrial times. Because wages could be sent over long distances to parents, children
often moved farther away from home – and once they moved away, the link to the family was weakened.
Problems of Crime and the Social Order
Throughout the nineteenth century, the political and economic elites – still shaken by the revolutions of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and coping with the social and economic changes brought on
by the Industrial Revolution – were deeply concerned about the social order in society. Growing cities and
industrial areas had to deal with poverty and unemployment; criminal activity against property especially
theft and arson. There was much incomplete recordkeeping but what is known is that, as the nineteenth
century unfolded, crime rates grew and each country reacted in different yet similar ways. For the wealthy
and propertied elite, controlling the social order lay in two challenges: creating more effective police forces
and prison reform.
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Professional Police Forces
Across Europe professional police forces appeared in the early nineteenth century to protect property, keep
order and apprehend criminals. These policemen differed from the army in that they were in charge of
domestic – not national -security. Professional police did not exist until the early nineteenth century and
differed from one country to the next in power and organization. Nevertheless, their appearance was
necessary to the emergence of a modern, orderly European society. Professional police appeared in Paris in
1828 and the next year in London. These latter were known as Bobbies (or sarcastically, Peelers) named for
the home secretary, Sir Robert Peel, who pushed the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 through Parliament.
After the Revolutions of 1848, police appeared in Berlin and many other European states.
All these officers were easily recognizable by their uniforms; the police on the continent carried guns; those
in Great Britain did not. Although citizens sometimes viewed the police with suspicion – especially in
Britain where many people felt that the police were a threat to their traditional liberties – most Europeans
regarded the police a their protectors.
People in the upper and middle classes (especially the Bourgeoisie) felt that the police made their property
more secure – as did people from the working classes, especially in emergencies. In Eastern Europe
however – especially in the Russia of the autocrat Nicholas I – the secret police, who had broad powers and
often used torture and summary execution, were hated and feared.
Prison Reform
Before the nineteenth century, prisons were usually local jails or state prisons such as the Bastille. Many
criminals were sent to prison ships called hulks. Some Mediterranean nations sentenced criminals to row in
naval galleys where they were chained to benches usually until they died – but not always. Prison inmates
lived in dreadful conditions. Men, women and children were housed together and persons guilty of minor
offences – such as indebtedness – were put in the same quarters as those guilty of the most serious crimes.
The British also transported prisoners to the colony of New South Wales (Australia). It was an alternative to
capital punishment for the hardened and cheaper for the state than to house the indebted poor and their
families. When Transportation was stopped midcentury, the British housed long term prisoners in Public
Works Prisons. Russia used Siberia as a penal colony for criminals. Siberia was a vast land with a harsh
climate and far from the Russian heartland. Penal labor was perfect to use in developing logging and mining
industries as well as the building of railroads.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, reformers in England such as John Howard (1726-1790) and
Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845) along with Charles Lucas (1803-1889) in France exposed the terrible condition in
prisons and demanded reforms. Reforms came slowly because prison reform was expensive and many had
little sympathy for criminals – even those who were imprisoned for indebtedness. But opinions seemed to
shift in the 1840s in Britain and France when serious efforts at reform were undertaken. The core of this
change came from the growing belief that criminals were flawed and needed to be rehabilitated
before they were returned to society. This led to more progressive and scientific prison systems in Europe
and the United States.
The two leading models came from the United States. The first was the Auburn System from New York
State, where prisoners were separated from each other at night but could associate while working during the
day. The second was the Philadelphia System in which prisoners were kept rigorously separated from each
other both day and night. Both systems had an individual cell for each prisoner and long periods of isolation
and silence among the prisoners.
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The most famous (or infamous) of these prisons was Pentonville Prison near London in which each
prisoner was housed in a separate cell and was never allowed to see or speak to another prisoner. In the
courtyard, each prisoner wore a mask; in chapel; each prisoner had his own stall or seat separated from the
other prisoners. The purpose was to induce self-reflection so that the prisoners would think about their
crimes and eventually decide to give up their criminal ways. The Pentonville Prison failed because the
intense isolation frequently led to mental breakdowns.
In France, imprisonment became more repressive as the nineteenth century passed. The French constructed
a few prisons on the model of Pentonville in the 1840s, a number that increased to sixty by 1908. In theory,
prisoners were to be trained in a trade or skill while in prison so they could become contributing citizens
when they were freed. In 1885 due to the vast numbers of repeat offenders, the French government
transported repeat and serious offenders to places like the infamous Devil’s Island in Surinam and New
Caledonia in the South Pacific to ensure they would never return home.
Economics
Classical Economics
Economic thought in the early nineteenth century was dominated by Adam Smith’s quintessential treatise
the Wealth of Nations which centered around the concept of Laissez-Faire Economics, in which the
government supports an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from
tariffs and government interference, with only enough government regulations sufficient to protect property
rights against theft and aggression.
Laissez-faire or Classical Economics thought of society consisting of individuals whose competitive efforts
met consumers’ demands in the marketplace which was the governor of most economic decisions. They
further saw the state protecting the free market with its military and naval strength; they saw a marketplace
built on thrift, competition and personal industry and that appealed to the middle class.
Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo
Early nineteenth century economics was further shaped by Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) and David Ricardo
(1772-1823). In 1798, Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population whose ideas have haunted
human beings ever since. He said the population must eventually surpass the food supply; that the food
supply grows arithmetically but population grows geometrically. The only hope of diverting disaster,
according to Malthus, was through late marriage, chastity and contraception. [As an Anglican priest, he
considered the last of these a vice.]
Malthus concluded that the plight of the working poor could only become worse. If wages were raised,
workers would respond by having more children who would, in turn, consume both the extra wages
and more food. In his later years, Malthus was more positive and suggested that, if the working class could
be persuaded to adopt a higher standard of living, their increased wages might be spent on consumer goods,
rather than begetting more children.
In 1817, David Ricardo published his Principles of Political Economy which transformed the ideas of
Malthus into the Iron Law of Wages. The law works like this. If wages are raised, parents will have
more children. The children in turn will enter the labor market expanding the number of workers
and lowering wages. As wages fall, however, working people will produce fewer children. Wages will
then rise, and the process would start all over again. Consequently in the long run, wages would
remain low. Therefore it was pointless for employers to raise wages and provided a strong argument
against labor unions.
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Needless to say, the working class people resented these ideas but the French and British governments
welcomed them. King Louis Philippe (r. 1830-1848) of France and his Prime Minister François Guizot told
the French people to go forth and enrich themselves. People who worked hard did not need to be poor and
more and more of the French middle class did just that. Louis Philippe’s reign (the July Monarchy) saw
major construction projects such as railways, roads and canals. But little was done about the poverty in the
city and the countryside.
In Germany, the middle class made less headway. After the Napoleonic wars, the Prussian reformers saw
the advantages of abolishing internal tariffs and trade barriers that made economic growth difficult. In 1834,
all the major German states except Austria formed a free trading union called the Zollverein.
Utilitarianism
Great Britain was the home of Classical Economists and such policies were well received by entrepreneurs
and the government. The utilitarian thought of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1831) increased their influence.
Bentham sought to create codes of scientific laws – founded on the Principle of Utility, that is laws that
create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people – and in two works, Fragment on
Government (1776) and The Principal Examples of Morals and Legislation, he explained that the
application of the principle of utility would overcome the special interests of privileged groups who
prevented rational government.
Bentham regarded the existing legal and judicial systems as burdened by traditional practices that harmed
the very people the law should serve. Not only could the principle of Utility create a just legal system, it
could also be applied to other areas of government administration. In 1834, his followers in the House of
Commons passed a new Poor Law which established a Poor Law Commission whose purpose was to
make poverty the most undesirable of all social circumstances. Government relief was to be given only to
those who went to Government workhouses and life in the workhouses was designed to be more unpleasant
than life outside. Spouses were separated; food was bad; the work distasteful and the social stigma the worst
of all. But even though their purpose was aid those who did not want to work, the laboring classes regarded
the workhouses as “Bastilles.”
Repeal of the Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade laws designed to protect grain producers in Great Britain and Ireland against
competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The laws favored British
landowners because they levied steep import duties on imported grain. That in turn reduced the amount of
grain for sale in Britain which drove up both the price of grain and the landowners’ profits. The Anti-Corn
Law League, founded in 1838, agitated peacefully to abolish the tariffs and allow lower wages without
harming workers. The prices on British manufactured goods could also be lowered to strengthen British
competitiveness in the world market. However, the most important reason that the Prime Minister, Sir
Robert Peel, allowed the Corn Laws to be repealed was the Irish Potato Famine of 1845. Peel had to open
British ports to foreign grain to feed the starving Irish but he also took steps to modernize British agriculture
to make it more efficient.
Early Socialism
But there were individuals who sought to ameliorate (make better) the plight of the working poor and force
capitalist governments to modify Laissez-Faire principles. One of the strongest responses to Capitalism and
Laissez-Faire Economics was Socialism, which arose in the first part of the 19th century when many
individuals came to the conclusion that the economic system was incredibly unfair to the average worker.
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They questioned whether the aristocracy or captains of industry had the right to be in control of so much
power over so many people and so they became vociferous (loud) critics of the Industrialist system and they
tirelessly worked to alleviate the social and economic evils caused by capitalism and industrialization. There
were three kinds of Socialists: Utopian, Revolutionary and Evolutionary.
Utopian Socialism
The earliest socialists were Utopian socialists. They were considered utopian because their ideas were often
visionary and because they often advocated the creation of ideal working communities. They were
socialists because they questioned the structures and values of the existing capitalist system.
Saint-Simonianism
Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was the earliest utopian socialist. As a young liberal French aristocrat, he
had fought in the American Revolution and he welcomed the French Revolution even though he made and
lost a fortune. By the time of Napoleon’s coming to power, he turned to a career of writing and social
criticism. Saint-Simon believed that modern society required rational management and that private
enterprise, wealth and property should be administered by the state, not its owners.
Saint-Simon’s ideal government would consist of a large board of directors that would coordinate the
activities of individuals and groups to achieve social harmony. He was – in a sense the father of
Technocracy (government in which experts in technology would be in control of all decision making), not the
redistribution of wealth. By his death in 1825, Saint-Simon’s idea of management by experts alleviating
poverty and social problems, had failed to win many followers. Nevertheless, Saint-Simonianism societies
became centers for lively discussions and some of the earliest debates in France over Feminism including
sex outside of marriage. (Several of Saint-Simon’s followers became French railway leaders during the 1850s)
Robert Owen
Robert Owen (1771-1858): was a Welsh, self-made cotton manufacturer, who became the best known of the
Utopian Socialists. Owen owned one of the largest cotton factories in Scotland at New Lanark. Owen
believed that people are products of their heredity and environment and this Environmentalist psychology
caused him to teach that if human beings were placed in the correct surroundings, they and their character
could be improved. And more importantly, Owen saw no contradiction between creating a humane
industrial environment and making a profit.
At New Lanark, Owen put his theories into practical application. Workers were provided good housing and
recreation facilities abounded. Owen raised wages, gave bonuses for employees who did good work, cut
working hours, kept young children out of the factory while sending them to school and operated a store that
sold goods at fair prices – and his reforms actually made money.
Although most captains of industry refused to adopt his reforms, Owen nevertheless showed the world that
cooperative control of industry (and educating children instead of exploiting them) was necessary to bring about
a just and equitable society. Visitors flocked from all over Europe to see what Owen had accomplished
through enlightened management and Owen wrote numerous pamphlets pleading for the reorganization of
industry based on the New Lanark Model. During the 1820s, Owen sold New Lanark and went to the United
States, where he established a community at New Harmony, Indiana. The community was established on
the Cooperative Principle in which its members voluntarily cooperated for their mutual, social, economic,
and cultural benefit.
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Quarrels among its members, however, led to the failure of the community and one member, Josiah
Warren (who later became an anarchist) asserted that the community was doomed to failure due to a lack of
individual sovereignty and private property. Owen returned to Britain where he became the moving force
behind the Grand National Union, which was an attempt to draw all British trade unions into a single
body. Along with similar labor organizations, it collapsed in the 1830s.
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier (1772-1837) was the French counterpart to Robert Owen. Not as well-known as Owen, he
wrote prodigiously (a whole lot) hoping a patron would help him undertake his ideas. Fourier believed that
industrialization had ignored the passionate (emotional; romantic) side of human nature and so he advocated
the construction of communities called Phalanxes in which liberated living would replace the monotony of
industrial life. His ideas were both agrarian and free thinking. He believed happy people would be more
productive. Wealth was determined by one's job; jobs were assigned based on the interests and desires of the
individual. Sex would be free and marriage reserved for later life and no person had to the same type of
work all day. Although he never found a benefactor, his identification of boredom as a hindrance to
industrial output isolated a key problem in even modern economic life.
Louis Blanc and the Organization of Labor
Saint-Simon, Owen and Fourier all hoped that governments would carry out their ideas but they failed to see
that social transformation was needed for social change. But there were those who looked more to the
practical and the politics of the situation. In 1839, Louis Blanc (1881-1882) published the Organization of
Labor in which he demanded an end to competition. He did not seek a wholly new society but called for
political reform that would give the vote to the working class. Once given the vote, workers could use the
vote to gain advantages in the political process. Blanc believed that a state dominated by a working class
electorate would also finance workshops to employ the poor which might even replace private enterprise.
Blanc foresaw the state as a major employer of labor.
Radical Socialism
Non-Utopian Socialists usually fell into two groups: Evolutionary Socialists who placed hope in
representative governments and called for the election of legislators who would support socialist reforms
and Anarchists who favored terror and violent revolutionary activities. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (18091869) represented the more peaceful of the anarchists.
In 1840, he wrote What is Property? In it, he attacked the banking system which was notorious for not
extending credit (making loans) to small property owners or to the poor. He wanted credit expanded to allow
the lower classes the opportunity to engage in economic enterprise. He believed that society should be
organized on the basis of Mutualism (the system whereby small businesses and other cooperative enterprises
could exchange goods and services based on mutual recognition). The state would play its role as the protector
of property. Proudhon’s ideas would inspire later socialists who wanted fairness in the market place and also
the French labor movement, which would become less involved in politics than the labor movements of
Germany or Great Britain.
Marxism
More radical were the German socialists Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) who
scorned the Utopian Socialists as “unrealistic venturers” that offered no real solution in a brutal world.
Marxism would exert more influence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries than any other form of
revolutionary socialism. Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany in the Prussian Rhineland. His family was
Jewish but his father had converted to Lutheranism.
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He graduated from the University of Berlin where he joined the Young Hegelians a group deeply involved
in the ambiguous (confusing) philosophy of George Friedrich Hegel. Marx became immersed in radical
politics and in 1842 edited the radical Rhineland Gazette. Soon Prussian authorities drove him out of
Germany into exile. He first lived in Paris, then Brussels and finally after 1849 in London.
Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen, Prussia (now Westphalia) and was the eldest son of a wealthy German
cotton manufacturer. At seventeen he dropped out of high school, joined the Prussian army which took him
to Berlin where he attended lectures of the Young Hegelians. In 1842, he was sent by his parents to
Manchester England to work in their factory which made thread. On the way, he stopped in Paris and first
met Marx. Two years later, the two again met and became friends. Then Engels published The Condition of
the Working Class in England, which was a devastating attack on the conditions of the working poor in
England. This book sealed their friendship. In 1847, they were asked to write a pamphlet for a newly
organized secret (and ultimately short lived) Communist League.
The result was The Communist Manifesto which was published in 1848. The name communist was chosen
by Marx, Engels and the league because it had more radical implications that the more innocent sounding
socialism. Communism comes from the French “commun” which means “common” (which we will see used
similarly in the next chapter with the Paris Commune of 1871) and it implied the complete abolition of private
property rather than the Utopian or Evolutionary socialists’ more conservative approaches. Despite its
enormous influence, The Communist Manifesto is a short work of just under fifty pages and for many years,
it was just another radical-socialist pamphlet. Contrary to popular belief The Communist Manifesto was an
analytical approach to the class struggle (historical and present) and the shortcomings (failures) of
capitalism, rather than a prediction of what communism might do for society and the working class.
Moreover, the Manifesto would not have much - if any - impact on the Revolutions of 1848.
Marx and Engels had both been influenced by British Classical Economics, French Utopian Socialism and
the Young Hegelians. Marx, who came to be an astute student of history and economics, made Hegel’s
abstract philosophical concepts of thesis and antithesis into a new intellectual synthesis. For Marx, the
conflict that arose between dominate and repressed social groups (which he called the haves and the havenots) would led to the formation of a new dominate social group. The haves were the capitalists (The
Industrial Bourgeoisie) who owned industrial machinery and factories and the have-nots were the Proletariat,
or the wageworkers who had only their labor to sell. They taught that the intense competition engendered by
capitalism led to ruthless exploitation of the working class.
Marx created a way of thinking that gave a special role or function to the new industrial work-force
as the single most important driving force of modern or industrial age history.
Thus, in The Communist Manifesto, Marx compared the fate of the Proletariat with the fate of humanity
itself; in other words, when the Proletariat liberated itself from Capitalist servitude (slavery), all of humanity
would be liberated. Even culture as expressed in art, education and music benefited the capitalists and hurt
the workers because they diverted workers from their misery. Marx was also highly and bitterly critical of
religion and called religion the Opiate of the Masses (opium = heroin; thus, the heroin of the masses) because
it encouraged people to focus on a hypothetical future life instead of correcting the injustices of this life.
Marx asserted that all human history had been a struggle between social classes and that the future lay with
the working class because the laws of history dictated that capitalism would inexorably (inevitably) grind to
a halt. In 1867, He published Das Kapital which was a condemnation of the capitalist system and in which
he utters his hallmark (quintessential) exhortation, Workers of the world, unite! Marx postulated that the
essence of capitalism is the exploitation of the working class and that the profits created by the workers are
wrongly expropriated (taken) by the employer.
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Marx and Engels believed that a socialist revolution was inevitable and would result in a Dictatorship of
the Proletariat, which would abolish private property and destroy the capitalist order. After the revolution,
the state would wither away, coercive institutions (like the police) would disappear and a fair, just and
egalitarian society would arise. Marx and Engels believed that the victory of the Proletariat over the
Bourgeoisie would be the culmination (the high point) of human history when no group of people would be
oppressed by another. This revolution would be the victory of humanity itself.
The ideas of Marx and Engels were a byproduct of the 1840s, a decade which had seen much human
suffering and unemployment. But not all of Marx' predictions came to pass because in the latter half of the
century, European and American capitalism did not collapse, the industrial system benefitted more and more
people and the middle class did not become proletarianized. Nevertheless, Marxism became ingrained
among many socialists because it appeared to be based on the empirical evidence of hard economic fact.
Thus, the doctrines of Marx and Engels would dominate European and international socialist thought and
ideas throughout the nineteenth century – and are still alive and well today!
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The Revolutions of 1848
In 1848, a series a liberal and nationalistic revolutions swept across Europe. They were a stunning event; for
they seemed to come from nowhere. Never in one year had Europe witnessed so many major uprisings.
The French monarchy fell and other thrones were visibly shaken. German and Italian liberalism and
nationalism were frustrated. The Hapsburg Empire was shaken and even Metternich had to resign and flee
the country. Yet without exception, the revolutions failed to establish liberal or national states. No single
factor caused the Revolutions of 1848 but among them were:
1. Poor harvests and food shortages with the Irish Potato Famine being simply the worst example of a
continent wide problem;
2. Continued wide ranging recessions with high unemployment levels which caused frustration and
anger especially in urban areas;
3. Public systems for the relief of the poor and unemployed which had become strained;
4. That fact that most nations had not properly addressed the terrible living conditions of the working
poor in urban and industrial areas;
5. The continuing unhappiness of the urban, artisan and laboring classes.
But the strongest force behind the outburst of frustration that led to the Revolutions of 1848 came –
not from the working classes – but from political liberals who were mostly from the middle class.
These Liberals wanted more representative government, protection of civil liberties and private
property and an unregulated economy.
The repeal of the English Corn Laws was an example of such peaceful agitation. Liberals on the Continent
also wanted to pursue similar peaceful tactics but - to put pressure on their governments – they allied with
urban workers who wanted more money and more favorable working conditions. This alliance would be a
significant factor in the Revolutions of 1848.
The 1848 revolution in France was political with economic undertones but outside France nationalism
played an important role in the Revolutions of 1848. Germans, Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Czechs, and
other ethnic groups wanted national states that would replace what they felt was the imposition of foreign
rule over them. It was in the Austrian Empire where this nationalist discontent was the strongest. Even more
confusing was the fact the various national groups clashed with each other during the revolutions.
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The forces of the Old Regime proved stronger than anyone had expected. Pierre Joseph Proudhon
summarized popular frustration when he wrote, “We have been beaten and humiliated . . . scattered,
imprisoned, disarmed and gagged. The fate of European democracy has slipped from our hands.” Yet
there would be gains. Austria and Prussia (and later Russia) would abolish feudalism; the middle class across
Europe would make social and economic gains; and the Habsburgs would ultimately give the Hungarians
more self-determination in the Ausgleich of 1867. But most importantly, the Revolutions of 1848 were a
glimmer of what could be.
France: The Second Republic
Earlier in the chapter we saw how Louis Philippe and his Prime Minister François Guizot told the French
people to go forth and enrich themselves and that, although his government undertook major projects such
as building railways, roads and canals, little was done about poverty and the corruption which was rampant
in the government. The liberal opponents of the king organized a series of political banquets (political
meetings under the guise of fund-raising banquets) at which they criticized the government and demanded the
vote be given to the middle class. The terrible grain harvests of 1846 and 1847 with the consequent resulting
inflation of food prices and high unemployment brought working class support for the liberals.
The February Revolution began on February 21, 1848, when the government forbade any further banquets
including one scheduled for the next day. Angry workers paraded through the streets demanding Guizot’s
ouster. The next morning the crowds grew larger and Guizot resigned. Then, reminiscent of 1832, the
crowds erected barricades and clashed with the police. On February 24, the citizen king abdicated and fled
to England to live his last days in exile. Thus ended the Orleans monarchy (1830-1848) and the foundation of
the Second French Republic.
The liberal opposition was led by the poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), who organized a provisional
government. The liberals intended to elect an assembly that would write a republican constitution (a
conservative document which favored the bourgeoisie and wealthy) but the working class in Paris had different
ideas. They wanted a social revolution as well as a political revolution. Led by Louis Blanc (who had
written Organization of Labor which demanded an end to competition in the marketplace) and two other radicals,
who became ministers of the Government Labor Commission, the provisional government organized
national workshops (i.e., public industries like railroads) that provided relief for the unemployed. Blanc was
trying to put his economic ideas into action; he also hoped that the workshops would also generate revenue
for the state.
On April 23, an election of universal male suffrage chose the new National Assembly. The result was a
legislature dominated by moderates and conservatives mostly because people in the provinces were afraid of
the radicalism of the Parisian working classes. Moreover, the Church was still influential and the peasants
were afraid that their farms would be confiscated. The new National Assembly thus had little sympathy for
the expensive national workshops which they believed were socialist in nature.
Throughout May, Paris was in turmoil as government troops tried to subdue the angry, unemployed
workers. As a result, the assembly closed the workshops to new members and made plans the eject many of
the enrolled members. Soon barricades again appeared. On June twenty-fourth, under orders from the
government, General Louis Cavaignac (1802-1857) used troops from the conservative countryside to put
down the riots. During the next two days, more than four hundred people were killed and another 3,000
were hunted down and arrested. The hope for a social revolution was over.
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Napoleon III
The June Days (as this violence was called) made it clear that conservative property holders were determined
to preserve a state that was secure for all property owners, large and small. Late in 1848, this was confirmed
with the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873) who was a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. In
exile in England, Louis Napoleon had helped to guard Queen Victoria during the Chartist uprising; twice he
tried to lead coups against Louis Philippe; and the turmoil of the June Days gave him his opportunity to take
power. The election of Louis Bonaparte, the Little Napoleon, doomed the Second Republic and he was able
to appeal to the poor by convincing them that he championed social issues; and to the middle and upper
classes because his name was linked with order, authority and the greatness of France.
Louis Napoleon quickly became a dictator, however, and quarreled with the National Assembly claiming
that he – not they – represented the will of the French people. In 1851, the Assembly refused to amend the
constitution to allow the president to run for a second term and so Napoleon – on the anniversary of his
uncle’s great victory at Austerlitz – had troops disperse the Assembly, seized power and called for new
elections. More than two hundred people died resisting the coup and more than twenty six thousand were
arrested with about ten thousand sent to exile in Algeria.
Then in a plebiscite in December 1851, only 600,000 voters out of 7.5 million voters dared to vote against
Napoleon and his amended constitution. A year later, an empire was proclaimed and Louis Napoleon
became the Emperor Napoleon III - on December 2nd, the forty-eighth anniversary of his uncle Napoleon’s
coronation. Again, a plebiscite overwhelmingly approved Napoleon’s elevation.
Many women were energized by the events of 1848. Most Parisian feminists wanted the vote but others like
the Vesuvians (so named for Mt. Vesuvius and a comparison to pent-up lava) demanded household equality, the
right of women to serve in the military, and removal of restrictions from women’s dress and fashions.
Others organized the Voix des Femmes (The Women’s Voice) which was a feminist newspaper which argued
that improvements in the lives of women would improve the condition of society as a whole. Compared to
the Vesuvians, the supporters of the Voix des Femmes were more conservative. They urged fidelity in
marriage and a maternal role for women but they believed that in order to have a better society, women
needed certain rights such as the vote, better education and equal civil and property rights with men.
Nevertheless, the fate of the French feminists in 1848 was similar to the repression of 1793 and the
radical French workers. The government denied their efforts and specifically forbade women to
participate in political clubs with by themselves or with men. The conservative crackdown caused women
associated with the Voix des Femmes to organize worker’s groups to improve the lives of working class
women.
Two leaders of these efforts, Jeanne Deroin (d. 1894) who was a follower of the utopian socialist Henri de
Saint-Simon and Pauline Roland (1805-1852), were arrested, tried and imprisoned. Deroin left France and
founded a boarding school in England for the children of French exiles and Roland was imprisoned in
Algeria, pardoned but died on the way home owing to the harsh conditions in the Algerian prison.
The Hapsburg Empire
The events that thundered through Paris reverberated through much of Europe and the Hapsburg Empire
was the most vulnerable. Its government had rejected all liberalism; it borders cut across ethnic lines; and its
government continued the practice of serfdom. During the 1840s, even Metternich urged reform but the
government was immovable.
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The Vienna Uprising
The Vienna rebellions began on March 3, 1848, when Louis Kossuth (1802-1894), a Magyar nationalist and
member of the Hungarian diet, attacked Austrian domination of Hungary and demanded responsible
reforms. Ten days later – stirred by Kossuth’s speeches – students led a series of riots in Vienna and when
the army was unable to restore order, Metternich resigned – to the cheering of the crowds - and fled to
London. The incompetent emperor Ferdinand (r. 1835-1848) promised a moderately liberal constitution but
this failed to satisfy the radical students who formed democratic clubs demanding further revolution. On
May 17, the emperor fled to Innsbruck leaving the government in Vienna in the hands of a committee of
two-hundred persons whose primary concern was ameliorating the economic distress of the city’s workers.
What the government feared more than the workers in Vienna was an uprising among the peasants in the
countryside. Already, a few serfs had invaded the manor houses of the nobility and burned property records.
So finally – in order to prevent a violent revolution – the government abolished serfdom in most of Austria
and the Hungarian diet soon did likewise. The prospects of violent revolution were now allayed (put at rest)
because emancipated serfs would have little reason to support the revolutionary workers in the urban areas.
It is important to understand that the emancipation of the serfs was the most important and lasting
result of the 1848 revolution in the Austrian Empire. Nevertheless, imperial authority was banished in
Vienna – temporarily – with the emperor’s exile in far western Austria.
The Magyar Revolt
Kossuth’s oratory and the Vienna revolt was not lost on the Magyar liberals and nobility who wanted their
liberties protected against the central government in Vienna. The Hungarian diet passed the March Laws,
which mandated equality of religion, trial by jury, the election of the lower chamber of the diet, a relatively
free press and payment of taxes by the nobility. The Emperor Ferdinand approved these laws because he had
no choice.
The Magyars also wanted a separate Hungarian state within the Hapsburg Empire; a state in which they
would possess local autonomy with Ferdinand as the emperor. To bring this quasi-independence into being,
the Hungarians attempted to annex Transylvania, Croatia and other eastern territories which would have
brought Romanians, Croatians and Serbs under Hungarian administration. These groups bitterly resisted
what they called Magyarization or the imposition of Hungarian language and government over them.
Thus, the Romanians in Transylvania, the Croatians and the Serbs in effect were rebelling against the
Hungarians who were rebelling against the Austrians. In late March, the Vienna government sent Count
Joseph Jellachich (1801-1859) to assist the Romanians, Serbs and Croatians and by early September,
Jellachich was invading Hungary with the support of the national groups resisting the Hungarians. It would
take another year to subdue the Hungarians and repeal the March Laws; laws that would have created a state
that had a liberal political structure but would not have given the fruits of that liberal structure to the subject,
non-Hungarian people with the new state.
Czech Nationalism
In mid-March, Czech nationalists also demanded that the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia (both
are Slavic and constitute today the Czech Republic) be allowed to form a west Slavic state within the Hapsburg
Empire similar to what Hungary had just accomplished. But conflict flared between the Czechs and the
Germans living in the region. So the Czechs summoned a congress of Slavs including Poles, Ruthenians,
Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, Slavs and Ruthenians which met in Prague in early June.
15
Under the leadership of the Czech historian and political leader, Francis Palacky (1798-1876), the first PanSlavic Congress called for national equality of Slavs with the Habsburg Empire and condemned Hapsburg,
Hungarian, Ottoman and German oppression of Slavic peoples. The great hope and dream of the congress
was a pan-Slavic state across Eastern Europe – and Palacky would come to be known as the Father of the
Czech Nation.
On June 12, the day that the Pan-Slavic Congress closed, a violent insurrection broke out in Prague led by
radical separatists. Prince Alfred Windischraetz (1787-1862), whose wife had been killed by a stray bullet,
declared martial law and moved his troops against the rebels. His crushing of the rebels met with the
approval of the Prague middle class who were afraid of radicalism; and by June 17, the rebellion was over.
The Germans in the area approved of the squashing of Czech nationalism – the policy of divide and conquer
had succeeded.
Northern Italy
An Italian revolt against the Hapsburg Empire began on March 18th, in Milan. Five days later, the Austrian
commander, Count Joseph Wenzel Radetzky (1766-1858) retreated from the city and King Charles Albert
of Piedmont (r. 1831-1849), who wanted to annex Lombardy of which Milan was the capital, gave aid to the
rebels. But Radetzky received reinforcements in July and defeated Piedmont and crushed the rebellion. For
the time being, Austria retained control in Northern Italy.
Hapsburg Triumph in Vienna and Budapest
By midsummer in Vienna, the emperor had returned, a newly elected assembly was trying to write a
constitution and radicals continued to press for more concessions. During the late summer and fall, the
imperial government made plans to reassert its authority. When a new insurrection occurred in October, the
army bombarded Vienna and crushed the revolt. On December 2, it was obvious that the emperor Ferdinand
was too feeble to rule, so he abdicated in favor of his young nephew Francis Joseph (r. 1848-1916) but the
real power lay with Prince Felix Schwarzenberg (1800-1852) who served as Minister-President and Foreign
Minister of the Austrian empire and who intended to use the army to crush all rebellion. He even allowed
Metternich to return to Austria provided that Metternich retire from all politics.
On January 5, 1849, imperial troops occupied Budapest and by March had re-imposed order throughout
Hungary. But the Magyar nobles rose up in one last revolt. Schwarzenberg asked Tsar Nicholas I for aid and
with 200,000 Russian troops, the Hungarians were finally crushed. Schwarzenberg was widely respected in
Europe as an able statesman, although not much trusted, even by the emperor. But by his leadership, the
Hapsburg Empire had survived its gravest internal challenge. Schwarzenberg walked a thin line between
constitutionalism and absolutist monarchy. Notwithstanding, on April 5, 1851, when this “Austrian
Bismarck” died suddenly from a stroke, it was a grave diplomatic setback for the Austrian Empire.
Defeat of Republicanism in Italy
The short war between Piedmont and Austria over the rebellion in Milan was only the first stage in the
Italian revolution. Many Italians had hoped that King Charles Albert would drive Austria out of Italy which
would thus prepare the way for Italian unification. The disappointed liberals and nationalists then looked to
Pope Pius IX (r. 1846-1878) who had a liberal reputation. He had encouraged imprisoned radicals be freed
and reformed the administration of the Papal States. So nationalists hoped he might be the focus of a unified
Italy. Although Pius claimed to be above national interests, he could not control the radicals and on
November 15, 1848, a radical assassinated Count Pelligrino Rossi, who had worked for Louis Philippe and
had recently become the Minister of the Interior of the Papal States.
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The next day, the Swiss Guards were disarmed and popular demonstrations forced the pope to agree to a lay
ministry for the Papal States and a constitution. Shortly thereafter, Pius IX was able to flee to Naples for
safe refuge. In February 1849, the radicals proclaimed a Roman Republic. Republican nationalists from all
over Italy – including Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi flocked to Rome. They hoped to use
the new republic as a base from which to unite the rest of Italy under a republican government.
In March 1849, radicals in Piedmont forced Charles Albert to renew the war with Austria which resulted in
almost immediate defeat at the Battle of Novara. Charles Albert then abdicated in favor of his son, Victor
Emmanuel II (r. 1849-1878). Novara meant that the Roman Republic was on its own and the troops that came
to suppress the Roman Republic came from France which wanted to prevent a strong, unified state on their
southern border. Moreover, the protection of the pope was good for French domestic politics and its
president Louis Napoleon. Garibaldi attempted to lead an army against Austria but it was defeated and on
July 3 French forces occupied Rome and stayed there until 1870. Pius IX returned to Rome, renounced his
liberalism and became one of the most arch-conservative leaders of the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Germany: Liberalism Frustrated
Nationalism and revolution also spread throughout the German states in 1848 and 1849. Insurrections
erupted in Wurttemberg, Saxony, Hanover and Bavaria where King Ludwig I was forced to abdicate in
favor of his son, Maximilian II. But the major revolution took place in Prussia.
Revolution in Prussia
On March 15 1848, large popular disturbances erupted in Berlin. The king, Frederick William IV (r. 18401861), believing that the trouble was due to foreigners, refused to use the army against the rioters. He even
announced limited reforms. Nevertheless three days later, several people were killed when troops cleared a
square near the palace. Frederick William was still hesitant to use force and the government was divided and
confused. The king called for the Prussian Constituent Assembly to write a constitution. The next day, as
angry crowds crowded around the palace, the king appeared on the balcony and saw the corpses of the slain.
He made further concessions and implied that Prussia would help to unify Germany. For all practical
purposes, the king had capitulated (given in).
The king then appointed a cabinet headed by David Hansemann (1790-1864) who was a widely respected
liberal. But the assembly was radical and democratic. As time passed, the king and his conservative
supporters decided to ignore the assembly. The liberal assembly resigned and a conservative one replaced it.
In April 1849, the assembly was dissolved and the king proclaimed his own constitution. One of its key
elements was Three-Class Voting. All adult males voted according to three classes based on the taxes they
paid. Thus, the highest paying tax payers who were only five percent of the population elected one third of
the assembly. This system would prevail in Prussia until 1918. In this revised constitution, ministers and the
army officers were responsible to the king alone.
The Frankfurt Parliament
Shortly after the first riots had erupted in Berlin, representatives from all the German states gathered in
Frankfurt on May 18, 1848 in order to revise the organization of the German Confederation. This
Frankfurt Parliament intended to write a moderately liberal constitution for a united Germany. This
alienated both the working classes and the conservatives. The very existence of the parliament (liberal by
nature and representing a challenge to the old political order) deeply offended the conservatives. Moreover, the
parliament’s refusal to restore the traditional protection the guilds once had, lost the parliament the support
of the industrial workers and artisan class.
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Because the liberals were too attached to the idea of a free labor market, they became alienated from the
working class and gave the conservatives an advantage upon which they could profit. And to make the
alienation worse; when there was a worker’s demonstration in September 1848 in Frankfurt, the Frankfurt
Parliament called in Confederation troops to smash the barricades and protect private property.
The Parliament was also divided on the issue of unification. Members disagreed whether to include Austria
in a united Germany [called the large German or Grossdeutsch solution] or to leave Austria out [called the small
German or Kleindeutsch solution]. The Kleindeutsch was the more popular because Austria rejected the whole
notion of a unified Germany and so the Frankfurt Parliament looked to Prussia for unification. On March 27
1849, the parliament produced a constitution and offered Frederick William IV of Prussia the crown of a
united Germany. But Frederick William refused, saying that kings ruled by the grace of God rather than by
the permission of man-made constitutions. Soon the parliament dissolved and Confederation troops drove
off the few remaining members. German liberals never fully recovered from the Frankfurt Parliament
debacle. The liberal majority had alienated the working classes and the conservatives, offended Prussia (and
Austria) and most of all failed to unite Germany.
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