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CHAPTER

21Ideologies and Upheavals1815−1850

CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVESAfter reading and studying this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Explain how peace was restored and maintained after 1815.

2. Discuss the new ideologies that emerged to challenge conservatism.

3. Identify the characteristics of the romantic movement.

4. Explain how and where conservatism was challenged after 1815.

5. Analyze the main causes and results of the revolutions of 1848.

ANNOTATED CHAPTER OUTLINEThe following annotated chapter outline will help you review the major topics covered in this chapter.

I. The Aftermath of the Napoleonic WarsA. The European Balance of Power

1. In 1814 the Quadruple Alliance of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain finally defeated France and agreed to meet at the Congress of Vienna to fashion a general peace settlement.

2. The first Treaty of Paris gave France the boundaries it possessed in 1792, which were larger than those of 1789, restored the Bourbon dynasty, and did not require France to pay war reparations.

3. The Quadruple Alliance combined leniency toward France with strong defensive measures that included uniting the Low Countries under an expanded Dutch monarchy and increasing Prussian territory to act as a “sentinel on the Rhine.”

4. Klemens von Metternich and Robert Castlereagh, the foreign ministers of Austria and Great Britain, respectively, as well as their French counterpart, Charles Talleyrand, were motivated by self-interest and a balance-of-power ideology in discouraging aggression by any combination of states or the domination of Europe by a single state.

5. The Great Powers agreed that each of them should receive territory for their victory against France: Great Britain gained colonies and strategic outposts; Austria took Venetia, Lombardy, and some Polish possessions; Russia’s and Prussia’s claims were disputed, and in the end, Russia accepted a small Polish kingdom and Prussia took part of Saxony.

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346 CHAPTER 27 • THE AGE OF ANXIETY

6. Napoleon escaped from Elba and reignited his wars of expansion, but he was defeated at Waterloo in 1815.

7. The second Treaty of Paris, concluded after Napoleon’s final defeat, was still relatively moderate toward France, although this time France was required to pay an indemnity and to support an army of occupation for five years.

8. The Quadruple Alliance then agreed to meet periodically to discuss common interests and to consider measures for maintaining peace in Europe.

9. This European “Congress System” lasted long into the nineteenth century and settled many international crises through international conferences and balance-of-power diplomacy.

B. Metternich and Conservatism1. The political ideals of conservatism

dominated discussions at the Congress of Vienna.

2. Determined defender of the monarchical status quo, Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773–1859) was an internationally oriented aristocrat who made a brilliant diplomatic career as Austria’s foreign minister from 1809 to 1848.

3. Metternich’s pessimistic view of human nature as prone to error, excess, and self-serving behavior was confirmed by the disruptive events of the American and French revolutions and the Napoleonic wars, which he believed responsible for twenty-five years of bloodshed and suffering.

4. Metternich, like other conservatives, blamed liberal middle-class revolutionaries for stirring up the lower classes.

5. He concluded that authoritarian governments were necessary to protect society from the baser elements of human behavior, which were released in a democratic system.

6. Metternich defended his class and its rights and privileges with a clear conscience, believing the church and nobility were among Europe’s most valuable institutions and bulwarks against radical change.

7. Liberalism appeared doubly dangerous to Metternich because it generally went with national aspirations and a belief that each people, each national group, had a right to establish its own independent government and fulfill its own destiny.

8. The idea of national self-determination under constitutional government was repellent to Metternich because it threatened to destroy the Austrian Empire.

9. The vast Austrian Empire of the Habsburgs included many peoples who spoke at least eleven different languages, observed vastly different customs, and lived with a surprising variety of regional civil and political institutions.

10. The multiethnic state Metternich served had strengths and weaknesses: its large population and vast territories gave the Empire economic and military clout, but its potentially dissatisfied nationalities undermined political unity.

11. Metternich had to oppose liberalism and nationalism because, if Austria was to remain intact and powerful, it could not accommodate ideologies that supported national self-determination.

12. In his efforts to hold back liberalism and nationalism, Metternich was supported by Russia and, to a lesser extent, the Ottoman Empire.

13. After 1815 both of these multinational absolutist states also worked to preserve their respective traditional conservative orders.

C. Repressing the Revolutionary Spirit1. In 1815 under Metternich’s leadership, the

conservative rulers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia formed the Holy Alliance, which worked to repress reformist and

CHAPTER 21 • IDEOLOGIES AND UPHEAVALS 347

revolutionary movements and stifle desires for national independence across Europe.

2. In 1820 revolutionaries succeeded in forcing the monarchs of Spain and the southern Italian Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to establish constitutional monarchies with press freedoms and universal male suffrage.

3. Metternich and Alexander I proclaimed the principle of active intervention to maintain all autocratic regimes whenever they were threatened.

4. Austrian forces then restored the autocratic Ferdinand I in the Two Sicilies in 1821, while French armies restored power to the king in 1823.

5. The Holy Alliance also limited reform in the German Confederation.

6. In 1819, following calls for the national unification of the German states, Austrian and Prussian leaders used the Confederation Diet to issue and enforce the infamous Karlsbad Decrees, which required the German states to outlaw liberal political organizations, police their universities, and establish a permanent committee to clamp down on liberal or radical reformers.

7. In Russia in 1825, a group of army officers inspired by liberal ideals staged a protest against the new tsar, Nicholas I, which ended in the death, public hanging, or exile of the movement’s leaders.

8. Through military might, secret police, imprisonment, and execution, conservative regimes in central Europe used the powers of the state to repress liberal reform wherever possible.

D. Limits to Conservative Power and Revolution in South America1. Metternich’s system proved quite

effective in central Europe, at least until 1848, but failed to stop dynastic change in France in1830 or prevent Belgium from

gaining independence from the Netherlands in 1831.

2. The most dramatic challenge to conservative power occurred in the 1820s in South America, where wealthy “Creole” elites broke away from the Spanish crown and established new republics based initially on liberal, Enlightenment ideals.

3. The well-established Creoles—about 5 percent of the population—resented the political and economic control of the “peninsulares,” people born in Spain who lived in and ruled the colonies; the vast majority of the population was comprised of people of ethnically mixed heritage, including enslaved and freed Africans and indigenous peoples.

4. By the late 1700s, the Creoles had begun to question Spanish policy and the necessity of colonial rule; the Napoleonic wars and France’s occupation of Spain inspired them to act.

5. In the north, the general Simón Bolívar, the “people’s liberator,” defeated Spanish forces and established a “Gran Colombia,” which lasted from 1819 to 1830.

6. In the south, José de San Martín, a liberal-minded military commander, successfully threw off Spanish control by 1825.

7. Dreams of South American federation and unity proved difficult to implement, however, and by 1830 the state established by Bolívar had fractured.

8. Most of the smaller new states initially had liberal constitutions, but in lands where women and the great underclass of non-Creoles did not receive the right to vote, these were difficult to implement.

9. These liberal experiments soon gave way to a system controlled by “caudillos,” or strong men, who ruled territories on the basis of military strength, family patronage, and populist politics.

10. Although the South American revolutions failed to establish lasting republics, they


demonstrated the revolutionary potential of liberal ideals and the limits on conservative control.

II. The Spread of Radical Ideas A. Liberalism and the Middle Class

1. Liberalism—based on the principal ideas of liberty and equality—demanded representative government as opposed to autocratic monarchy, equality before the law as opposed to legally separate classes, and individual freedoms.

2. In Europe in 1815, only France and Great Britain had realized much of the liberal program, and even in those countries, liberalism had only begun to succeed.

3. Despite conservative opposition, liberalism had gained a group of powerful adherents, including the new wealthy industrial and commercial elite.

4. Liberal economic principles, the doctrine of laissez faire, called for free trade, unrestricted private enterprise, and no government interference in the economy.

5. In early nineteenth-century Britain, business elites enthusiastically embraced laissez faire policies because they proved immensely profitable, and they used liberal ideas to defend their right to conduct business as they wished.

6. Labor unions were outlawed because, these elites argued, they restricted free competition and the individual’s “right to work.”

7. Early-nineteenth century liberals favored representative government, although they wanted property qualifications attached to the right to vote; in practice, this meant excluding workers, peasants, and women, as well as middle-class people, who did not meet the property requirement.

8. As liberalism increasingly became identified with upper-class business interests, some opponents of conservatism felt that liberalism did not go nearly far enough.

9. These radical republicans called for universal voting rights, at least for males, and for democracy, and they showed more willingness than most liberals to endorse violent upheaval to achieve their goals.

B. The Growing Appeal of Nationalism1. Early nationalists found inspiration in the

vision of a people united by a common language, common history and culture, and common territory.

2. In German-speaking central Europe, defeat by Napoleon’s armies had made the vision of a national people united in defense of their “fatherland” particularly attractive.

3. In the early nineteenth century, such cultural unity was more a dream than a reality because a variety of ethnic groups shared the territory of most states and local dialects kept peasants from nearby villages from understanding each other.

4. Nationalism nonetheless gathered force as a political philosophy, facilitated by higher literacy rates, a mass press, large state bureaucracies, compulsory education and conscription armies, which created a common culture and encouraged people to take pride in their national heritage.

5. In multiethnic states, nationalism also promoted disintegration, as European nationalists sought to turn the cultural unity they desired into political reality.

6. They believed that every nation, like every citizen, had the right to exist in freedom and to develop its character and spirit.

7. Their political goal of making the territory of each people coincide with well-defined boundaries in an independent nation-state made nationalism explosive in central and eastern Europe, where different peoples intermingled.

8. The refusal of the Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires to allow national minorities independence fomented discontent among nationalists; contrarily, in Italy and the German Confederation,


nationalists yearned for unification across what they saw as divisive and obsolete borders.

9. The rise of nationalism depended heavily on the development of complex industrial and urban societies, which required much better communication between individuals and groups.

10. Promoting the use of a standardized national language through mass education and the popular press created at least a superficial cultural unity in many areas.

11. Many scholars argue that nation-states emerged in the nineteenth century as “imagined communities” that sought to bind millions of strangers together around the abstract concept of an all-embracing national identity.

12. Between 1815 and 1850, most people who believed in nationalism also believed in either liberalism or radical republicanism.

13. Liberals and especially democrats saw the people as the ultimate source of all government, but they agreed with nationalists that the benefits of self-government would be possible only if the people were united by common traditions that transcended local interests and even class differences.

14. Yet early nationalism developed a strong sense of “us” versus “them,” to which nationalists added two highly volatile ingredients: a sense of national mission and a sense of national superiority.

C. The Foundations of Modern Socialism1. Early socialist thinkers believed the

political revolution in France, industrialization in Britain, and the rise of laissez faire fomented a selfish individualism that encouraged inequality and split the community into isolated fragments.

2. With an intense desire to help the poor, socialists preached economic equality and advocated economic planning and the

regulation of private property by the government, or its abolition and replacement with state or community ownership.

3. Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) optimistically proclaimed that the key to progress was proper social organization in which leading scientists, engineers, and industrialists would carefully plan the economy and guide it forward by undertaking vast public works projects.

4. Charles Fourier (1772–1837) envisaged a socialist utopia of mathematically precise, self-sufficient communities and advocated the total emancipation of women.

5. Robert Owen, an early proponent of labor unions, also called for society to be organized into model industrial-agricultural communities.

6. Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, who became known as “utopian socialists,” all had followers who tried to implement their ideas; their attempts collapsed by the 1850s, although they inspired future reformers and revolutionaries.

7. In What Is Property? (1840), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) argued that property was profit that was stolen from the worker, who was the source of all wealth.

8. Louis Blanc (1811–1882) focused on practical reforms, and in his Organization of Work (1839), he urged workers to agitate for universal voting rights and to take control of the state peacefully.

9. As industrialization spread, the socialist message was embraced by French urban workers, who had become violently opposed to laissez-faire laws that denied workers the right to organize in guilds and unions.

10. Thus, the aspirations of workers and radical theorists reinforced each other, giving rise to a socialist movement in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s.


D. The Birth of Marxist Socialism1. The German intellectual Karl Marx

(1818–1883) wove the diffuse strands of socialist thought into a distinctly modern ideology, Marxist socialism—or Marxism.

2. Marx studied philosophy in Berlin before turning to journalism, and then, forced to flee Prussia in 1843, he traveled Europe to promote socialism, often relying on his friend and colleague Friedrich Engels for financial support.

3. After the Revolutions of 1848, Marx settled in London, where he spent the rest of his life as an advocate of working-class revolution.

4. Capital, his magnum opus, appeared in 1867.

5. Marx synthesized sociology, economics, philosophy, and history, and he drew on the ideas of utopian socialists, though he criticized them for their fanciful utopian schemes and claimed that his version of “scientific” socialism was rooted in historic law.

6. Building on the German philosophies of idealism associated with Georg Hegel (1770–1831), Marx came to believe that history had patterns and purpose and moved forward in stages toward an ultimate goal.

7. Marx argued that class struggle over economic wealth produced change in human history; one class had always exploited the other, and with the advent of modern industry, society was split between the upper class—the bourgeoisie—and the working class—the proletariat.

8. He further argued that the ever-growing, ever-poorer proletariat would develop a revolutionary class-consciousness that would lead them to overthrow the bourgeoisie in a violent revolution.

9. The result would be the end of class struggle and the establishment of communism, a system of radical equality.

10. Marx posited the idea of “surplus value,” the difference between the value of goods and the wages workers received to produce them, which the bourgeoisie pocketed in the form of profit.

11. To Marx, capitalism was immensely productive but highly exploitative, as the bourgeoisie, in a never-ending search for profit, squeezed workers dry and expanded across the globe.

12. When Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, the Communist movement was in its infancy, but by the time of Marx’s death in 1883, Marxism had profoundly reshaped left-wing radicalism.

III. The Romantic MovementA. The Tenets of Romanticism

1. Followers of the new romantic movement, which reached its height from about 1790 to the 1840s, revolted against the emphasis on rationality, order, and restraint that characterized the Enlightenment and the controlled style of classicism.

2. Romantics championed emotional exuberance, unrestrained imagination, and spontaneity in both art and personal life; in their works, they explored the power of emotions such as love, desire, and despair.

3. Romantics valued intuition and nostalgia for the past over the scientific method and progress, sought the inspiration of religious ecstasy instead of secularization, and turned inward and delved into the supernatural instead of engaging in public life and civic affairs.

4. The romantics were enchanted by nature, and most saw modern industry as an ugly, brutal attack on their beloved nature and venerable traditions.

5. Romantics sought escape and believed that history held the key to a universe they perceived to be organic and dynamic, not mechanical and static as the Enlightenment thinkers had believed.


6. Historians influenced by romanticism, such as Jules Michelet who wrote books on the history of France, promoted the growth of national aspirations and encouraged the French people to search the past for their special national destiny.

7. Romanticism was also a lifestyle, and many early-nineteenth century romantics lived lives of emotional intensity that included obsessive love affairs, duels, madness, illnesses, and suicide.

8. Great individualists, the romantics believed that the full development of one’s unique potential was the supreme purpose in life.

B. Romantic Literature1. Romanticism found its distinctive voice in

a group of English poets led by William Wordsworth (1770–1850).

2. In 1798 Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) published their Lyrical Ballads, which was written in the language of ordinary speech and endowed simple subjects with the loftiest majesty.

3. Classicism remained strong in France until Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), in her study On Germany (1810), extolled the spontaneity and enthusiasm of German writers and thinkers.

4. Between 1820 and 1850, the romantic impulse broke through in the works of Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo (1802–1885), and George Sand (pseudonym of the woman writer Armandine-Aurore-Lucile Dudevant).

5. Hugo’s powerful novels, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), exemplified the romantic fascination with fantastic characters, exotic historical settings, and human emotions.

6. Renouncing his early conservatism, Hugo equated freedom in literature with liberty in politics and society, a political evolution that was exactly the opposite of Wordsworth’s.

7. In central and eastern Europe, literary romanticism and early nationalism often reinforced each other, as romantics championed their own people’s histories, culture, and unique greatness.

8. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were particularly successful at rescuing German fairy tales from oblivion.

9. In the Slavic lands, romantics played a decisive role in converting spoken peasant languages into modern written languages.

10. In the vast Austrian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, the combination of romanticism and nationalism was particularly potent.

C. Romanticism in Art and Music1. The great French painter Eugène

Delacroix (1798–1863) was a master of dramatic, colorful scenes that stirred the emotions.

2. German-speaking Casper David Friedrich (1774–1840) painted somber landscapes of ruined churches or remote arctic shipwrecks, capturing the divine presence in natural forces.

3. Notable romantic English painters included Joseph M. W. Turner (1775–1851), who often depicted nature’s power and terror, and John Constable (1776–1837), who painted humans living peacefully amid rural landscapes.

4. Abandoning well-defined structures, the great romantic composers used a wide range of forms to create a thousand musical landscapes and evoke a host of powerful emotions.

5. The crashing chords evoking the surge of the masses in Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude and the bottomless despair of the funeral march in Beethoven’s Third Symphony plumbed the depths of human feeling.

6. Music became a sublime end in itself, expressing the endless yearning of the soul, and made cultural heroes of romantic composers such as Franz Liszt


(1811–1886), whose performances evoked great emotional responses.

7. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), the most famous romantic composer, used contrasting themes and tones to produce dramatic conflict and inspiring resolutions.

8. Even though Beethoven began to lose his hearing at the peak of his fame and eventually became completely deaf, he continued to compose immortal music.

IV. Reforms and Revolutions Before 1848A. National Liberation in Greece

1. Despite living under the domination of the Ottoman Turks since the fifteenth century, the Greeks had survived as a people, united by their language and the Greek Orthodox religion.

2. The rising nationalism of the early nineteenth century led to the formation of secret societies and then to revolt in 1821, led by Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek patriot and a general in the Russian army.

3. At first, the Great Powers opposed the revolution and refused to back Ypsilanti.

4. Yet many Europeans responded enthusiastically to the Greek national struggle, and as the Greeks battled on against the Turks, they hoped for the support of European governments.

5. In 1827 Great Britain, France, and Russia yielded to popular demands at home and directed Turkey to accept an armistice.

6. When the Turks refused, the navies of these three powers trapped the Turkish fleet at Navarino and destroyed it.

7. Great Britain, France, and Russia finally declared Greece independent in 1830 and installed a German prince as king of the new country in 1832.

B. Liberal Reform in Great Britain1. Eighteenth-century British society had

been both remarkably stable and somewhat fluid.

2. Successful business and professional people could join the landed aristocracy,

and the common people enjoyed limited civil rights; yet only about 8 percent of the population had the right to vote, and government policies supported the aristocracy and the new industrial capitalists.

3. By the 1780s there was growing interest in political reform, and by the time of the Napoleonic wars, unions began to form; however, the British aristocracy was extremely hostile to attempts to change the status quo.

4. Conflicts between the ruling class and laborers were sparked in 1815 when the aristocracy selfishly forced changes in the Corn Laws, prohibiting the importation of foreign grain unless the price at home rose to improbable levels.

5. The revision of the Corn Laws during a time of widespread unemployment and postwar economic distress triggered protests and demonstrations by urban laborers, with the support of radical intellectuals.

6. The Tory government, completely controlled by the landed aristocracy, responded by temporarily suspending the traditional rights of peaceable assembly and habeas corpus.

7. Two years later, Parliament passed the infamous Six Acts, which placed controls on a heavily taxed press and practically eliminated all mass meetings.

8. These acts were followed by an enormous but orderly protest at Saint Peter’s Fields in Manchester, which was savagely repressed by armed cavalry.

9. In response to calls for reform from the new manufacturing and commercial elite, in the 1820s the Tory government moved in the direction of better urban administration, greater economic liberalism, civil equality for Catholics, and limited importation of foreign grain.

10. These actions encouraged the new business elite to press for reform of


Parliament so they could have a larger say in government.

11. The Whig Party had by tradition been more responsive to middle-class commercial and manufacturing interests and sponsored the Reform Bill of 1832.

12. A surge of popular support propelled the bill into law and moved politics in a more democratic direction that allowed the House of Commons to emerge as the all-important legislative body, at the expense of the aristocrat-dominated House of Lords.

13. The new industrial areas of the country gained representation in the Commons, “rotten boroughs” were eliminated, and the number of voters increased by 50 percent to include about 12 percent of adult men; thus a major reform had been achieved peacefully.

14. The “People’s Charter” of 1838 and the Chartist movement, that demanded universal male (but not female) suffrage, pressed British elites for more radical reform.

15. In addition to calling for universal male suffrage, many working-class people joined with middle-class manufacturers in the Anti–Corn Law League, founded in Manchester in 1839.

16. When Ireland’s potato crop failed in 1845 and famine prices for food seemed likely in England, a few Tories joined with the Whigs to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846 and allow free imports of grain.

17. From that point on, the liberal doctrine of free trade became almost sacred dogma in Great Britain.

18. The Tories passed the Ten Hours Act of 1847, which limited the workday for women and young people in factories to ten hours, and they continued to support legislation regulating factory conditions.

19. This competition between a still-powerful aristocracy and a strong middle class to gain the support of the working class was

a crucial factor in Great Britain’s peaceful evolution.

C. Ireland and the Great Famine1. The people of Ireland did not benefit from

the political competition in Britain; the great majority of the rural population, Irish Catholic peasants, were trapped in an exploitative tenant system under a tiny minority of Church of England Protestant landlords.

2. The condition of the Irish peasantry was abominable, described by novelist Sir Walter Scott as “the extreme verge of human misery.”

3. Despite the terrible conditions, the population of Ireland doubled, from 4 million in 1780 to 8 million by 1840, a population explosion that was caused primarily by the extensive cultivation of the potato.

4. The decision to marry and have large families made sense for peasants: rural poverty was inescapable, but a couple could better manage it, and children meant extra hands in the field.

5. As population and potato dependency grew, conditions became more precarious, and potato crop failures in 1845, 1846, 1848, and 1851 resulted in the Great Famine, a period of widespread sickness and starvation.

6. The British government, committed to free-trade ideology, was slow to act, and when it did, its relief efforts were tragically inadequate.

7. Moreover, the government continued to collect taxes, landlords demanded their rents, and tenants who could not pay were evicted and their homes destroyed.

8. The Great Famine shattered the pattern of Irish population growth: fully 1 million emigrants fled the famine between 1845 and 1851, and up to 1.5 million died.

9. In contrast to other European countries, Ireland experienced a declining population in the second half of the nineteenth


century, becoming a land of out-migration, early death, late marriage, and widespread celibacy.

10. The Great Famine also intensified anti-British feeling and promoted Irish nationalism, leading to campaigns for land reform, home rule, and, eventually, Irish independence.

D. The Revolution of 1830 in France1. Louis XVIII’s Constitutional Charter of

1814 was basically a liberal constitution that protected the economic and social gains of the middle class and the peasantry in the French Revolution, permitted great intellectual and artistic freedom, and created a parliament with upper and lower houses.

2. The moderate king refused to bow to the wishes of aristocrats who wanted to sweep away all revolutionary change, and he appointed moderate royalists to serve as his ministers.

3. Louis XVIII’s charter was liberal but not democratic, however, allowing only about 100,000 of the wealthiest males out of a total population of 30 million to vote for representatives to the Chamber of Deputies.

4. Nevertheless, the “notable people” who did vote came from a variety of backgrounds and included wealthy businessmen, war profiteers, successful professionals, ex-revolutionaries, large landowners from the middle class and the old aristocracy, Bourbons, and Bonapartists.

5. Louis’s conservative successor, Charles X (r. 1824–1830), wanted to re-establish the old order in France but was blocked by the opposition of the deputies, so in 1830 he turned to military adventure in an effort to rally French nationalism and gain popular support.

6. In June 1830, in response to a long-standing dispute with Muslim Algeria, a French force of 37,000 crossed the

Mediterranean and took the Algerian capital city of Algiers in three weeks.

7. In 1831 Algerians in the interior revolted and waged a fearsome war until 1847, when French armies finally subdued the country and expropriated large tracts of Muslim land.

8. Emboldened by the good news from Algeria, Charles repudiated the Constitutional Charter in July 1830, stripped much of the wealthy middle class of its voting rights, and censored the press.

9. The immediate reaction was insurrection in the capital, and three days of vicious fighting brought down the government and forced Charles to flee.

10. Then the upper middle class, which had fomented the revolt, seated Charles’s cousin, Louis Philippe, duke of Orléans, on the vacant throne.

11. These events inspired people across Europe: Belgian Catholics revolted against the Dutch king and established independence, and Swiss regional liberal assemblies forced cantonal governments to amend constitutions.

12. In partitioned Poland, an armed nationalist rebellion against the Russian tsarist government was crushed by the army.

13. Louis Philippe (r. 1830–1848) accepted the Constitutional Charter of 1814 and adopted the red, white, and blue flag of the French Revolution.

14. The political situation in France remained fundamentally unchanged, however—the upper middle classes had brought about a change in dynasty that maintained the status quo—and popular demands for reform went unanswered.

V. The Revolutions of 1848A. A Democratic Republic in France

1. In the late 1840s, Europe entered a period of tense political and economic crisis that led to revolts and insurrections all across Europe.


2. Revolution in Europe was almost universally expected, but it took events in Paris—once again—to turn expectations into realities.

3. For eighteen years Louis Philippe’s “bourgeois monarchy,” characterized by stubborn inaction and complacency, had served the selfish interests of wealthy elites and failed to enact social legislation or electoral reform.

4. The government’s failures, combined with a severe depression and crop failures in 1846–1847, united a diverse group of opponents and eventually touched off a popular revolt in Paris on February 22, 1848; workers and students, armed with guns and dug in behind makeshift fortresses, demanded a new government.

5. When Louis Philippe refused to call in the army and then abdicated, the revolutionaries proclaimed a provisional republic, headed by a ten-man executive committee, and immediately began drafting a democratic, republican constitution for France’s Second Republic.

6. They gave the right to vote to every adult male, freed all slaves in French colonies, abolished the death penalty, and guaranteed workplace reforms.

7. Profound differences within the revolutionary coalition reached a head in 1848 in the face of worsening depression and rising unemployment.

8. Moderate liberal republicans, having conceded to popular forces on the issue of universal male suffrage, were opposed to further radical social measures.

9. Radical republicans were committed to some kind of socialism, while urban artisans, who hated the unrestrained competition of cutthroat capitalism, advocated a combination of strong craft unions and worker-owned businesses.

10. Louis Blanc pressed for recognition of a socialist right to work, urging the creation of permanent government-sponsored

cooperative workshops that would be an alternative to capitalist employment and a step toward a new, noncompetitive social order.

11. Moderate republicans were willing to provide only temporary relief, however, and the resulting compromise set up national workshops, which were soon to become little more than a vast program of pick-and-shovel public works that satisfied no one.

12. As the economic crisis worsened, the number enrolled in the workshops soared from 10,000 in March to 120,000 by June, with another 80,000 trying unsuccessfully to join.

13. Meanwhile, voters elected to the new 900-person Constituent Assembly 500 monarchists and conservatives, about 270 moderate republicans, and 80 radicals or socialists.

14. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), one of the moderate republicans, observed that the socialist movement in Paris aroused the fierce hostility of France’s peasants, who owned land, and of the middle and upper classes.

15. The clash of ideologies—of liberal moderation and radical socialism—became a clash of classes and arms after the elections.

16. Fearing that their socialist hopes were about to be dashed, artisans and unskilled workers invaded the Constituent Assembly on May 15 and tried to proclaim a new revolutionary state, but the government put down the uprising.

17. As the workshops continued to fill and grow more radical, the fearful but powerful propertied classes in the Assembly dissolved the national workshops in Paris, giving the workers the choice of joining the army or going to workshops in the provinces.

18. The result was a spontaneous and violent uprising; barricades sprang up again in the


narrow streets of Paris, and a terrible class war began.

19. After three terrible “June Days” of street fighting and the death or injury of more than ten thousand people, the republican army under General Louis Cavaignac stood triumphant in a sea of working-class blood and hatred.

20. In place of a generous democratic republic, the Constituent Assembly issued a constitution featuring a strong executive.

21. Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, won the election of December 1848, fulfilling the desire of the propertied classes for order at any cost and producing a semi-authoritarian regime.

B. Revolution and Reaction in the Austrian Empire1. News of the upheaval in France evoked

excitement, as liberals demanded constitutions, representative governments, and greater civil liberties from authoritarian regimes and then revolted when governments hesitated.

2. Confronting a united front of urban workers, students, middle-class liberals, and peasants, monarchs quickly made concessions, but soon traditional forces reasserted their authority and revoked many of the reforms when the revolutionary coalition began to break down.

3. The revolution in the Austrian Empire began in Hungary in 1848, where nationalistic Hungarians demanded national autonomy, full civil liberties, and universal suffrage.

4. When the monarchy in Vienna hesitated, Viennese students and workers took to the streets, while peasant disorders broke out in parts of the empire.

5. The Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I (r. 1835–1848) capitulated and promised reforms and a liberal constitution, while Metternich fled to London.

6. The coalition of revolutionaries was not stable, however, and once the monarchy abolished serfdom, the newly free peasants lost interest in the political and social questions agitating the cities.

7. Meanwhile, the coalition of urban revolutionaries broke down along class lines over the issue of socialist workshops and universal voting rights for men.

8. In March the Hungarian revolutionary leaders pushed through an extremely liberal, almost democratic, constitution, but they also sought to transform Hungary’s multitude of provinces and peoples into a unified and centralized Hungarian nation.

9. To the minority groups that formed half of the population—the Croats, Serbs, and Romanians—unification was unacceptable, as each group felt entitled to political autonomy and cultural independence.

10. Thus, desires for national autonomy enabled the monarchy to play one ethnic group against the other.

11. Finally, the conservative aristocratic forces rallied under the leadership of the archduchess Sophia, Ferdinand’s sister-in-law, who insisted that Ferdinand abdicate in favor of her son, Francis Joseph.

12. The first conservative breakthrough came on June 17, when the army bombarded Prague and savagely crushed a working-class revolt.

13. At the end of October, the regular Austrian army attacked the student and working-class radicals barricaded in Vienna and retook the city at the cost of more than four thousand casualties.

14. After Francis Joseph (r. 1848–1916) was crowned emperor of Austria, Nicholas I of Russia (r. 1825–1855) sent 130,000 Russian troops into Hungary on June 6, 1849, to subdue the country after bitter fighting.


15. For a number of years, the Habsburgs ruled Hungary as a conquered territory.

C. Prussia, the German Confederation, and the Frankfurt National Parliament1. Since the Napoleonic wars, liberal

German reformers had sought to transform absolutist Prussia into a constitutional monarchy, hoping it would eventually lead to a unified nation-state.

2. After Louis Philippe’s fall and several years of crop failure and economic crisis, liberals began to press their demands.

3. In 1848, when the artisans and factory workers rioted in Berlin and temporarily joined with middle-class liberals in the struggle against the Prussian monarchy, the autocratic yet compassionate Frederick William IV (r. 1840–1861) vacillated and finally caved in.

4. On March 21 he promised to grant Prussia a liberal constitution and to merge Prussia into a new national German state.

5. When the workers issued a series of democratic and vaguely socialist demands that troubled their middle-class allies, a conservative clique gathered around the king to urge counter-revolution.

6. In May, a national parliament convened in Frankfurt to write a German federal constitution; the middle-class elites who were elected as deputies called for constitutional monarchy, free speech, religious tolerance, and abolition of aristocratic privileges, but they ignored calls for more radical action.

7. In October deputies proposed unification around a “Greater Germany” that would include the German-speaking lands of the Austrian Empire, but the proposal foundered on Austrian determination to maintain its empire.

8. In March 1849 the national parliament finally completed its draft liberal constitution and elected King Frederick William of Prussia emperor of a “lesser” German national state (minus Austria).

9. Frederick William reasserted his royal authority, disbanded the Prussian Constituent Assembly, and refused to accept the “crown from the gutter” offered by the parliament in Frankfurt.

10. When Frederick William, who really wanted to be emperor but only on his own authoritarian terms, tried to get the small monarchies of Germany to elect him emperor, Austria balked.

11. Supported by Russia, Austria forced Prussia to renounce all schemes of unification in late 1850, and the German Confederation was re-established.

12. In the various German states, reactionary monarchs granted their subjects conservative constitutions and weak parliaments and stepped up surveillance, as former revolutionaries fled into exile and German liberals gave up demands for national unification.

13. Attempts to unite the Germans—first in a liberal national state and then in a conservative Prussian empire—had failed completely.

LECTURE STRATEGIES

Lecture 1: Pursuing Equilibrium: European International Relations After 1815

War had punctuated Europe’s eighteenth century. The nineteenth century was far more peaceful, at least within the boundaries of Europe. After the disasters of the Napoleonic wars, European states moved from an international system based on the principle of balance of power to one that emphasized equilibrium. It was a remarkably successful transformation, one that maintained European political stability for nearly a century.

For students interested in international relations, this lecture provides an opportunity for a short tutorial on the history of diplomacy. Originating around 1500 in the Italian city-states, international diplomacy blossomed after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648). By the eighteenth century, the guiding European diplomatic principle was to maintain a balance of power, which (some historians argue) created a structure that promoted war rather than


prevented it. Fiscal and military limitations, rather than diplomacy, were the main reasons why more wars did not occur in the eighteenth century.

But the Napoleonic wars began to forge a new international system. Recap the impact of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars on Europe. Napoleon’s armies transformed war into a total affair, demanding the mobilization of whole populations and aiming to destroy armies rather than just occupy land. To ward off the French contagion, European nations forged a series of coalitions, including some unlikely alliances (e.g., Britain and Russia) that paved the way for more coalition building in the post-Napoleonic era. By 1813 the coalition partners had shifted their goals from war-making to peacemaking and their diplomatic strategies from coercion to persuasion.

The Congress of Vienna was pivotal in forging the new international system. Draw out the nuances of the agreement: key provisions included the congress system within the Concert of Europe; a system of intermediate bodies as buffers and spheres of influence; and the fencing off of Europe from external conflicts (i.e., Europeans could penetrate the rest of the world without having much effect on intra-European politics). Of course, inherent weaknesses continued: Britain tended toward isolationism; Austria-Hungary was threatened by nationalist movements; Prussia grew increasingly ambitious; and Russia was increasingly rigid. But the system held together relatively well, regardless.

Sources: Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (1994); F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System, 1814–1914 (1980); T. Chapman, The Congress of Vienna: Origins, Processes, Results (1998).

Lecture 2: Competing for Legitimacy: Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism

Political theory is not the most compelling topic for history students, but this lecture can be enlivened with references to vivid personalities and dramatic events. Emphasize the enduring nature of the questions raised in the post-1815 period: How best to create political and economic stability? What should be the balance between individual freedom and state authority?

Begin with the conservative agenda. Claiming “legitimacy,” conservatives believed the answers lay in long-established political, economic, and cultural

systems: monarchy, aristocracy, and organized

religion (illustrate this principle by showing

students Heinrich Olivier’s The Holy Alliance

[1815]). As a case study, Metternich is a

fascinating individual who has left a vast

correspondence revealing his political

convictions.

After explaining the conservative position, explore the threats to Metternich’s vision. German universities and student fraternities provide interesting case studies in resistance, as do the nationalist movements in Greece, Hungary, Italy, and elsewhere. Help students see Metternich’s system within a wider context of revolt and reform: in 1831–1832, England was torn apart by riots in favor of the Reform Bill; the election of President Andrew Jackson in the United States signaled change; and South America struggled for independence from Spain. All of these events suggest that Metternich’s system was flowing against the tide. But urge students to resist the tyranny of hindsight and recognize that Metternich’s system was not necessarily doomed from the start, and not all monarchists were evildoers.

Liberalism is perhaps the easiest of the three to explain, as students find it the most familiar, but make sure they have their definitions straight. Nineteenth-century liberalism is not the same as the “l-word” so readily tossed around by today’s political pundits. The life and commitments of John Stuart Mill, in partnership with his wife Harriet, can serve as one case study of liberalism (and allow you to include a discussion of feminism as one piece of the liberal creed). The British response to the Irish famine is another.

Finally, because socialism is so misunderstood, it is important to explain it carefully and with enough detail so that students can understand its appeal to so many for such a long time. Show students that socialism’s early versions differed considerably from the Stalinist versions they might know. Marx, of course, deserves ample time, but so do other early socialists: Pierre Proudhon’s assertion that “Property Is Theft” bears close examination, as does Robert Owen’s experiments in social harmony. Norman Davies’s Europe: A History (1998) contains a very


useful chart labeled “The Pedigree of Socialism,” which highlights socialism’s many variants.

Sources: Albert S. Lindemann, A History of European Socialism (1983); Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe 1800–1914 (1996); Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored (1973); Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern (1991).

Lecture 3: The Bohemian Revolt

This topic is too good to skip. The artistic and literary responses to the dual revolutions are a delight to teach and often strangely relevant to students’ worlds. Begin with the basics. Introduce the broad historical context, exploring the birth of bohemianism within Enlightenment thought (Jean-Jacques Rousseau) and its growth during the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. Lay out the geography, pointing out that it was particularly strong in Britain, France, and the Germany confederation. Explore its social dynamics, noting that its adherents included both men and women from a variety of class backgrounds.

Then delve into the romantics’ key ideas and attitudes: emotional exuberance, imagination, spontaneity in art and personal life. One key idea was their rejection of bourgeois values. Gustav Flaubert signed his letters with the title “Bourgeoisophobus” and claimed that hatred of the bourgeoisie was “the beginning of all virtue.” The romantics condemned the money-making bourgeoisie as dull, crass, conformist, and, worst of all, unheroic. They flocked to run-down neighborhoods, lived in garrets, wore beards and long hair, and adopted flamboyant dress. One might argue they were the first purveyors of a “lifestyle.”

Give examples of how, in their art, poetry and music, the romantics often strove to shock. Tell the story of how poet Gérard de Nerval took a lobster on a walk in the Tuileries gardens. The romantics wrote about suicide and sometimes committed it. They identified with the victims of the bourgeois order: the poor, criminals, those struggling for nationhood. Some elevated sex to an art form.

Of course, a critique is also necessary. Many of the romantic artists were bourgeois themselves; they were cultivated and sophisticated individuals who were never as antimaterialist as their rhetoric suggested. But they celebrated creativity, rebellion, novelty, self-expression, anti-materialism, and heroism nonetheless. Turn the lecture into a holistic experience by sharing plenty of examples of the art, poetry, and music of the movement. If slides are

available, the grandiose paintings of Theodore Gericault (The Raft of the Medusa [1819]) and Eugène Delacroix (Massacre at Chios [1824]) are not to be missed.

Sources: Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism (1999); Boris Ford, ed., The Romantic Age in Britain (1992); Cwisfa Lim, Romanticism: Dawn of a New Era (2002); Iain McCalman, An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age (1999; available online by subscription).

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS AND DIFFICULT TOPICS

1. The Corn Laws

The objective of the 1815 revision of the Corn Laws, which imposed tariffs on imported grain, was simply to protect British agriculture (in British lingo, corn refers to wheat, rye, and barley, not maize), but the application and effects of the laws were more complicated. The Corn Laws prevented the importation of foreign-grown grain until domestically grown grain reached a certain price (initially £4 per quarter, with a quarter meaning a unit of eight bushels). Perhaps more challenging for students to understand is how the Corn Laws became a tool of class warfare. They were designed to protect large landowners, not the small tenant farmers, and to keep the price of grain—and therefore bread—high. In a defense of the Corn Laws, Benjamin Disraeli argued that their repeal would destroy the “territorial constitution” of Britain by empowering commercial interests. The greatest champion of repealing the Corn Laws, Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, saw it more as a way to head off revolution than as an act of liberal economic reform.

2. Early Nationalism

Given our familiarity with nationalism’s twentieth-century versions, it is easy to misunderstand the origins and nature of nationalism in the nineteenth century. The roots of nationalism can be found in the Enlightenment’s and the French Revolution’s emphasis on liberal democracy and fundamental human rights (i.e., nationalism as a doctrine of “popular sovereignty”). The idea evolved into a doctrine in Europe during the Napoleonic wars, as nationalists asserted that humanity is naturally divided into nations, and that nations should form the


bases of states and state power. Prior to this time, the monarch had most often embodied the nation (e.g., Louis XIV’s “l’etat, c’est moi”). As time passed, nationalism increasingly became a tool for denying the right of national self-determination to Africans, Asians, and revolutionary Europeans. Generally, nationalism can take two different forms: (1) nationalism as loyalty to an existing state (patriotism), or (2) nationalism as liberation—the desire to create a new state based on identities, whether religious, ethnic, cultural, or linguistic.

Sources: Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Becoming National: A Reader (1996); Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (1990); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (1960).

IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES

Using Film and Television in the ClassroomWhen it first appeared, Civilization: A Personal View by Lord Clark (1969) was labeled by one critic as “the definitive documentary series of the last fifty years” and “eternally significant.” Though now dated, it still offers gorgeous visuals and useful insights into the history of Western art, architecture, and philosophy. For the nineteenth century, try episode eleven (“The Worship of Nature”) on the glorification of nature as a creative force and spark behind the romantic movement. Other documentaries on the romantic movement include Simon Schama’s The Power of Art: Turner—Painting Up a Storm (2007, 50 min.) and the three-episode series The Romantics (Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2006, 60 min. each), which uses creative reenactments to explore the lives and works of William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Percy and Mary Shelley.

Many feature-length films on the romantic movement seem to reflect the adage “don’t let the facts stand in the way of a good story.” The premise of the film Immortal Beloved (1994, 121 min.) is speculative—that Beethoven’s enduring love interest was his brother’s wife—and as one reviewer put it, the whole question is “less a great mystery than a minor curiosity.” But well-selected clips can help introduce this temperamental genius and his music to students. Look for the segment set against the Ninth Symphony. Other films about Beethoven can be

found at http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Fictions /FictionFilmsImmortalBeloved.html. Another option is Impromptu (1991, 107 min.), about the romance between Chopin and George Sand, but its preoccupation with sexual promiscuity suffers from historical anachronism and may disqualify it from classroom viewing. Or check out the classic Chopin biography, A Song to Remember (1945, 113 min.), but keep an open eye for historical errors.

Paris continued to be at the center of the cultural and political movements of the age. Paris: 1830 (1997, 14 min.) introduces students to the monuments to France’s glory days (Arc de Triomphe, the Pantheon, and the Place de Concorde), as well as the romantic artists and musicians who made Paris their home, while Victor Hugo: Les Misérables (1975, 3 hrs. 48 min.) dramatizes Hugo’s novel and provides a riveting social portrait of mid-century Paris. (Both films are available from Films for the Humanities and Social Sciences.) Of course, you also might show students portions of Les Misérables (1998, 134 min.), which many mistakenly believe to be set in 1789 but actually is set against the backdrop of the antimonarchist Paris uprising of June 1832.

With its intrinsic drama, the Great Famine in Ireland is surprisingly unrepresented on screen. On the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the potato blight, the BBC produced a documentary The Great Irish Famine (1996), but if you use it, ask students to compare its tone and slant to that presented by other historians, such as Christine Kinealy and Cormac Ó Grada. Part one of the acclaimed PBS series The Irish in America: Long Journey Home (1997, 86 min.) focuses on the emigration that resulted from the potato blight.

Class Discussion Starters

1. What relationship does feminism have to other mid-century “isms” and ideologies?

Modern feminism—a complex doctrine in itself—emerged from within various ideological traditions. While liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights, is often recognized as the main source of feminism, socialist and nationalist movements also brought women’s interests forward. Guide students in a discussion of utopian socialists’ views of free love or Friedrich Engels’s writings on the family. Point out women’s involvement in the nationalist


movements of 1848 and another, often ignored “ism” that also shaped early feminism: evangelicalism.

Sources: Jane Rendall, The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France, and the United States, 1780–1860 (1990); Bonnie Smith, Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700 (1989); Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries, eds., Women, Gender, and Religious Cultures in Britain, 1800–1940 (1910).

2. Why did the revolutions of 1848 fail?

No simple response will suffice. Generally, you can point to divisions among the revolutionaries as the reason for the downfall—for example, splits between propertied liberals and the urban working classes—but to answer the question well, students must understand local variations. In Hungary, for example, anti-Jewish riots sparked by the prospect of Jewish enfranchisement, and Croatian opposition to Hungarian rule, were significant factors. The revolutions of 1848 demonstrated, once again, that it is easier to bring down a regime than to build one up.

Historical DebatesThe plight of the Irish during the Great Famine rarely fails to capture the interest of students. Was the disaster inevitable or avoidable? Should the British have done more to relieve distress? If so, what could have been done differently? How did prevailing political and economic ideologies shape the responses?

You might give students contrasting historical assessments and have them decide which is more convincing (F. S. L. Lyons, for example, called the initial response “prompt and relatively successful,” while others like historian Christine Kinealy are more critical). However, a debate staged with historical actors is more engaging, albeit time-consuming, and can elicit nuances in the various historical responses. As you prepare students for the debate, urge them to remember the complexity of the Irish situation in the 1840s. As William Thackeray observed, “To have an opinion about Ireland, one must begin by getting at the truth; and where is that to be had in the country? Rather, there are two truths, the Catholic truth and the Protestant truth….Belief is a party business” (Irish Sketch Book,1842).

Students will quickly learn that there were, in fact, more than two truths. For this debate to work, students will need a thorough knowledge of Anglo-

Irish politics and society. Among Irish landlords, some behaved well (the Earl of Kingston spent half his annual income relieving distress), while others behaved badly (refusing to lower rents and evicting tenants). Irish tenant farmers also responded differently, depending on their region and relative prosperity. Similarly, attitudes among the British varied greatly, reflecting a range of perceptions and prejudices. Sometimes ideology was to blame for the ad hoc, haphazard, and ill-planned responses; at other times it was basic incompetence. Make sure the students draw out the ideological underpinnings where applicable and address how the ideas of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo played a role. Students will have fun choosing parts: on the British side, Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Sir Charles Trevelyan, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Queen Victoria, and some Quakers; on the Irish side, Daniel O’Connell, John Mitchel (“Young Ireland”), Lord Mayor of Dublin, some landlords, and, of course, their tenant farmers.

Sources: Helen Litton, The Irish Famine: An Illustrated History (2003); Christine Kinealy, A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland (1997); Edward Lengel, The Irish Through British Eyes: Perceptions of Ireland in the Famine Era (2002); Cecil Woodham-Smith, The Great Hunger, 1945–49 (1991); various books by Cormac Ó Gráda.

Using Primary SourcesExcerpts are always an option, but the full-length versions of the era’s classics are well worth the investment of time. Three that work well are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818), Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848). As students encounter these texts, give them background on the authors’ lives, views, and motivations. Discuss the forms of the texts too. For example, both Tocqueville and Marx were writing polemic works—that is, writing to advocate causes. These texts were not, nor were they intended to be, balanced scholarly treatises. Polemic works usually promote an author’s viewpoint and summarily dismiss opposing arguments. Because of this, you might invite students to “talk back” to these texts, making counterarguments with historical evidence.


Cooperative Learning Activities

1. American Idol: The Romantics

Music is such a potent tool for teaching history that it would be a shame not to engage students with the masterpieces of romantic music. One alternative to the “research and report” approach is a competition in the format of American Idol. Ask students to come to class as their chosen personas, introduce themselves (with some personal details), and then play a five- to ten-minute selection for a panel of “judges.” They might choose to be Frederic Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg, Clara Schumann, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, or another composer or performer from the period. The panel of judges can applaud, hiss, and ask questions about harmony, form, tonality, or something more personal. A student who comes as Chopin and plays an excerpt from the “Revolutionary Étude” (op. 10 no. 12), for example, should be prepared to explain that it was inspired by the Polish revolution of 1831.

Source: Alex Zukas, “Different Drummers: Using Music to Teach History,” Perspectives (September 1996).

2. Mapping the 1848 Revolutions

Like 1989, the year 1848 brought enormously complex political changes. A series of liberal revolutions exploded around Europe, in France and Hungary, Milan and Sicily, and across the German states. Some clamored for liberal constitutions, others for nationhood, and still others for workers’ rights. But who can keep it all straight? Give students a blank map of Europe and ask them to map the revolts, indicating the central issues, key leaders, and major turning points and outcomes.

Sources: Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution (2009); Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851 (1994).

FILM AND AUDIO• Civilization: A Personal View by Lord Clark,

Episode 11: “The Worship of Nature” (1969, BBC, 50 min.)

• Simon Schama’s The Power of Art, Episode 5: “Turner” (2006, BBC, 60 min.)

• The Romantics (2006, Films Media Group, 60 min. each)

• Immortal Beloved (1994, Icon Entertainment International, 121 min.)

• Impromptu (1991, C.L.G. Films, 107 min.)• A Song to Remember (1945, Columbia Pictures

Corporation, 113 min.) • Paris: 1830 (1997, Films Media Group, 14

min.)


• Victor Hugo: Les Misérables (1975, Films Media Group, 228 min.)

• Les Misérables (1998, Mandalay Entertainment, 134 min.)

WEB RESOURCES• Eugene Delacroix (http://www

.eugenedelacroix.org/)• Edgar Allan Poe Museum (http://www

.poemuseum.org)• Encyclopedia of 1848 Revolutions

(http://www .ohio.edu/chastain/)• The History Place: Irish Potato Famine

(http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/index.html)

• Interpreting the Irish Famine, 1846–1850 (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadlier/irish/Famine.htm)

• The Nationalism Project (http://www .nationalismproject.org/)

• Utopian Socialism Archive (http://www.marxists.org/subject/utopian)

• Victor Hugo Central (http://www.gavroche.org /vhugo)

• The Walter Scott Digital Archive (http://www .walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk)

• William Wordsworth: The Complete Poetical Works (http://www.bartleby.com/145)

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