The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 in Europe and the question of political exiles across Europe

1. Revolutions and State Formation
in Europe, 1789-1871
Dr Christos Aliprantis
American College of Thessaloniki – Anatolia College

2. The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 in Europe
and the question of political exiles: Introduction
 Revolutions “in waves” (Kurt Weyland)
 Revolutions in 1830-31 in France, Belgium,
Switzerland, central Italy, Russian Poland
 Revolutions in 1848-49 in France, the
German and Italian states, the Habsburg
Empire, the Danubian Principalities
 Numerous Italian, French, German and
Polish political exiles (something between
hundreds and thousands) fleeing abroad after
the suppression of their revolutions at home

3. 1. The July Revolution in France (1830)
 Highly authoritarian government under Charles X (1824-
30): restricted suffrage, censorship, ruling against the
constitution (Le Charte): “July degrees” (25 July 1830)
 “Three glorious days” (27-29 July): most workers and
newsmen went on strike protesting against the harsh
censorship policies of the government
 The situation escalated into conflicts between protesters
and the army in Paris and led to the building of barricades
 After three days of street fighting, Charles X resigned and
a new “liberal” monarch Louis Philippe (1830-48) took
his place under a more liberal constitution (July monarchy)

4. 2. The 1830 Revolution in Belgium
 Belgium under Habsburg rule in the 18th c.; after 1815 the
Great Powers merged it with Holland to form the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands despite heavy linguistic and
religious differences and under largely Dutch control
 The rising discontent led to a revolution in August 1830 in
Brussels and to extended street fighting
 The military efforts of the Dutch king Willem I to retake
Brussels (and later Belgium) failed
 The 1830 London conference recognized the independent
Belgian kingdom under Leopold I; the Netherlands
accepted the new state only in 1839

5. 3. The 1830-31 Revolutions in central Italy
 Austrian influence remained dominant across the Italy in the
1820s favoring absolutism and national fragmentation
 The French and Belgian revolutions created new hopes for an
Italian national unification esp. since Italian patriots hoped that
France under Louis Philippe would intervene in their favor
 By 1830 revolts led by the Carbonari broke out in Modena, Pa-
rma as well as certain Papal provinces (Bologna, Ferrara, etc.)
 The Pope asked for Austrian help while France did not
eventually intervene; Austrian troops marched into the Italian
states, crashed revolutionary resistance and arrested the
revolutionary leaders by spring 1831

6. 4. The “November Revolution” in Russian
Poland (1830-31)
 Poland had been partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria in
1795; after 1815 Russian Poland enjoyed considerable autonomy
with a constitution of its own, which was though often violated
 In November 1830 a group of Polish liberal army officers rioted in
Warsaw triggering the Polish revolution of 1830
 An independent Poland was proclaimed headed by Adam Jerzy
Czartoryski leading to the Russo-Polish war of 1830-31
 The Polish revolutionaries were defeated despite the affection of the
French and British public opinion; their governments were against a
Polish state; Russian autocratic control was reestablished in Poland

7. 5. The character of the 1830 revolutions: a
“prelude” to 1848?
 The 1830 revolutions retained the elements of liberalism and romantic
nationalism that were to be found in the 1820-21 revolutions as well
 The “geography of revolutions” was shifted once more from the European
South to the North
 France (esp. Paris) kept its position as the “political laboratory” of Europe
 The revolutions were generally swift. Only the Polish revolution took the
character of a prolonged strife between a belligerent nation and an empire
(much like the Greek revolution)
 Many liberal, national and social demands remained unfulfilled leading to the
revolutions of 1848-49

8. 6. The “Springtime of Peoples”: the 1848
Revolutions in Europe
 The only genuinely pan-European revolutionary movements in the
19th c.
 Discontent in France (political, social); the German and Italian states
as well as the Habsburg Empire (national); “hungry forties” =>
worsened social conditions
 I. Spring 1848: initial successes of the revolutionaries; optimism
 II. Summer: rising internal divisions between the revolutionaries
 III. Autumn: reorganization of counter-revolutionary forces, which
regained control =>
 IV. Late 1848-1849: crashing of the revolutionary regimes

9. 7. The 1848 Revolutions in France
 The so called “citizen king” Louis Philippe had become highly
unpopular as he was deemed to have failed to deliver his promise
for a more inclusive system of government
 22-24 February 1848: revolution and barricades in Paris => new
constitution and proclamation of the Second French Republic
 Increasing tensions between liberals and labor strata due to the
bad living and working conditions of the latter => creation of the
National Workshops, where the state employed jobless laborers
 Controversial, costly and probably unproductive measure => the
government attempted to abolish them triggering intense reaction
and the June Days in Paris: a series of bloody street conflicts
between the army and (radical) workers

10. .
 The army and the “party of law and order” emerged victorious
 The increased weakening of the Republican government allowed
the rise of a new Bonaparte: Louis Napoleon, who was first elected
President (12/1848) and then became Emperor (12/1851) based on
the promise of security and stability against revolutionary menace

11. 8. Revolutions in the German states in 1848-49
 Major revolutionary centers in Germany in 1848 => Berlin,
Frankfurt; in 1849 => Dresden, Baden
 “March days” in Berlin => popular demonstrations against
the absolutist rule of Friedrich Wilhelm IV => barricades and
bloody conflicts in the streets => proclamation of a new
constitution (parliament, constitutional monarchy)
 Later in 1848 royal troops marched into Berlin and a more
conservative, monarchist constitution was enacted (12/1848)
 A National Assembly was gathered in Frankfurt made by
representatives from all the German states to discuss the form
of the new united and democratic Germany as well as the new
constitution

12.  The Frankfurt parliament quickly lost credit since it held no real
executive power; it was eventually dissolved in June 1849
 The Frankfurt constitution remained without real impact as it was
not recognized by the major German states
 While 1848 closed with a victory of the conservative forces, 1849
saw a second round of more radical revolutions (Baden) and
socialist revolts (Dresden), which were also violently suppressed

13. 9. The Revolutions in the Habsburg Empire
 The Austrian Empire was considered the pillar of the post-1815
autocratic principles; the “March days” in Vienna and the fall
of the elderly chancellor Metternich meant the end of an era
 Series of revolutions in Vienna (March, May, October 1848) =>
revolutionary constitutions but eventual capture of the city by
Habsburg troops and reestablishment of absolutism
 In Prague a Slavic conference was assembled in spring 1848 to
determine the future of the Slavic nationalities; the conference
was violently dissolved by Habsburg troops in June 1848
 The leaders of the Hungarian national movement demanded
initially autonomy and later independence => war and defeat of
the Hungarian forces by Austrian and Russian troops (8/1849)

14. 10. Revolutions in the Italian states
 The most significant Italian revolutions of 1848 took place in
Naples/Sicily, Rome, Piedmont and Venice
 Kingdom of Two Sicilies: initial revolutionary successes; victory of
royal forces
 Rome: proclamation of a Roman Republic and its suppression by the
French army (1849)
 Venice: revolutionary Republic of San Marco; fall to the Austrian
forces (8/1849)
 Liberal constitution in Piedmont and war against Austria for the
unification of Italy; Piedmontese defeat and abdication of King
Carlo Alberto

15. 11. A direct aftermath of the 1830 and 1848
revolutions: political exiles across Europe
 The (modern) concept of political refugee was developed after 1792,
when French royalists (émigrés) fled across Europe
 After every revolutionary turn (1815, 1820-21, 1830, 1848) new
waves of political refugees were created by those who were defeated
and were no longer desirable in their homelands
 Esp. after 1830 Italian and Polish exiles headed to Paris, where the
July monarchy offered them asylum at first but also enforced
policies of (strict) surveillance as well
 These mid-19th c. exiles were rather few in number (up to some
thousands) but were educated, political meaningful and active

16. 12. Political exiles in western Europe (G.
Britain, France, Belgium)
 The once more inclusive French policy towards exiles (1830-48) gave its
place to a more hostile one after 1848. The Second Republic/Second
Empire either sent exiles away or put them under police surveillance
 Radical French exiles fled to London too (Alexander Ledru-Rollin, etc.)
 The British government gave asylum after 1830 and 1848: numerous
German, French, Italian and Polish exiles sought refuge there (incl.
Marx, Mazzini, etc.) as long as the represented no danger for Britain
 Otherwise the British government could be equally “authoritarian” as the
continental states when it came to persecuting troublemakers at home

17. .  The British government too used (occasionally) police informers to
surveil the exiles and was in touch with the continental governments
regarding the most radical among them
 Similar phenomena appeared in Belgium too, where exiles could be
placed under police surveillance and/or arrested. The Belgian
authorities were also in touch with the French, Prussian or Austrian
ones to exchange information about their exiles and criminals at large

18. 13. Political exiles in the Ottoman Empire
 Polish (after 1830) and Italian and Hungarian (after 1848) exiles
reached the Ottoman Empire and Greece as well
 In the Ottoman case, some of them were also placed under house
arrest (e.g. Lajos Kossuth in 1849-50). More interestingly though,
others were used to staff the Ottoman state mechanism
 The Ottoman Empire needed trained officials in the context of the
ongoing Tanzimat reforms aimed to modernize the administration
 E.g. the Polish general Josef Bem, who fought in the Hungarian war
of 1849, fled to the Ottoman Empire, was converted to Islam, and
served as the governor of Aleppo in 1849-50

19. Conclusion
 The Revolutions of 1830 and especially of 1848-49 were no doubt the
massive challenges to the status quo and to the political authority
since the French revolution of 1789
 They seemed to be remarkably interconnected (also thanks to the
power of the Press) and rather similar in demands (constitutional,
national, social)
 The western European ones (France, Belgium) tended generally to be
more successful, while in Germany, Italy or Poland, the Prussian,
Habsburg and Russian autocracies were still able to enforce their own
will at the expense of national or liberal/constitutional agendas
 In the 1850s-60s many of these demands would be fulfilled though by
conservative governments that aimed to prevent another revolution