The essential question for our class’ unit on the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 was “Were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures, as many historians have concluded. To learn the information needed to produce an answer, our class first looked at how the recent revolutions in France had influenced the revolutions that were sweeping through Europe. As Alexis de Tocqueville said, “We are sleeping on a volcano. Do you not see that the Earth trembles anew? A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.” This ‘volcano’ was a metaphor for those who had been oppressed by their current government, people who were increasingly unhappy, those who might organize a coup/rebellion. The ‘wind of revolution’ is the ripples of unease in the aristocrats of Europe after France’s revolution. As you can see in the image below, the recent French revolution really did have an impact on surrounding countries’ mentalities.
With this look into how the revolutions went, we devised a scale, from complete Failure, to Complete success. This scale would determine what our group though of the result of the revolutions.
After our group made the scale, we split into new groups, were assigned revolutions from either 1830 or 1848 (or around there, you get the idea), and summarized them. My group’s was the ‘Frankfurt Assembly Revolution’. Here’s some sourcing + info on it.
Country:
Frankfurt (Germany)
Date:
Throughout 1848
Goals:
Wanted a constitution for the people of Germany, something fair, like maybe a republic or a constitutional monarchy, and whether or not to include Austria in a united German state, as in national unity and some more nationalist reforms
Opponent:
The conservative king (Prussia's Frederick William IV), who thought the liberalists were a serious threat to his rule, rejected their constitution and ideals, also partially because it 'came from the gutter' (the people), and not princes or those of a respectable amount of nobility
Outcome:
Troops were sent in from Prussia to quell the uprisings, and the King dissolved the assembly, thousands of Germans left the country (many moving to the US because if there some of the more rebellious people were killed or sent to prison
Reasons for Success/Failure:
Mostly a failure, because of the intervention by the king of Prussia, (who wasn't their enemy at first, but became their enemy once he rejected their proposal). One upside was that not many people died, and things went back to ‘normal’ pretty quickly afterwards.
Now let’s hit some primary sources.
One of the goals of the Frankfurt Assembly was to create a constitutional Monarchy. The illustration above shows Frederick William IV (along with the military, and other aristocrats, presumably)'shutting the door' to the peoples' demands
Sourcing: Satyrische Zeitbilder - (a contemporary satirical image) - from Hamburg, Germany. This image is in support of the rebels and makes William IV look like a bad guy.
And 2 more:
(Please excuse the light blurs)
Now for our group’s SurveyMonkey, used to test our classmates’ existing knowledge of the Frankfurt Assembly and to teach them more:
They were given this link to help them out. All the information is on there, this test was more of a reading and understanding exercise.
Here’s the survey results that we got:
I’d say that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were pretty much failures. None of them really took off, though most weren't complete failures. The Decembrist Revolt was, (most people were brutally killed), but the Frankfurt Assembly was mostly peaceful in the end, though it was a failure. The Hungarian revolution of 1848 seemed like it was going in a good direction for the rebels, but Austrian troops soon crushed them. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time for a revolution, because none of these worked.
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