During this past week of classes, the topic that I found to be most interesting was the 1848 revolution. However, it was not the failure or success of the revolution that most interested me, but the revolution’s overall lukewarm nature. Beyond the fact that whatever type of revolutionary organization that existed was held together, at best, by a vague desire for change, the revolutionaries seem to have entered in to this endeavor half-heartedly. The three types of thinkers (liberals, radicals, conservatives) all had their various and individual goals, and while fighting for the same thing, upon achievement of toppling the old ways, their weak alliance dissipated and the old order slowly crept back in to the seat of power. This seems to have been the course of events surrounding 1848. And this does explain one way that the revolution managed to fail. But my question is why go through all of the trouble of having a revolution if at the end you are not willing to take what you have earned. Other revolutions in other parts of the world have shown us that it generally takes a lot to cause a people to rise up against their government. They have to have been trampled and abused in ways that leave them no other choice. And it is because of this lack of choice that they rise up, and are starving for change. Once the revolt succeeds, they typically embrace their newfound clean slate and begin to mold their society in a manner different from that of their previous state. However, the Germanic people of 1848 seem to have never have been pushed to the limit that necessitates revolt. Yet, revolt they did. It is possible that their initial lack of revolutionary spark is what caused the revolt to end with little progress. By this I mean that the vast majority of German people simply joined the revolt to initiate changes that would by themselves not be worthy of revolution. For instance, a farmer who wanted five more cents for each bail of hay would probably not care about women’s voting rights, and once the price of hay went up, it is most likely that he would abandon his revolutionary post to return to his fields. This hardly seems like the action that would be taken by a true downtrodden revolutionary. But this type of thing seems to have been the case. Assuming that revolution is only as powerful as it’s components (people/ideas/etc) the German revolution of 1848 seems to have far more weak than many other revolutions throughout history. In fact, I would posit that the events of 1848 were not so much revolutionary and were instead merely the popular thing to do that year.
-Paul Howard
