CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. The Origins of the Revolutions of 1848

A. The Spread of Revolution in 1848: “The

Springtime of Peoples”

B. The Conservative Counterrevolution,

1849–52

II. The Labor Movement and the Rise of Socialism

III. Mid-Victorian Britain

IV. The Crimean War, 1853–56

V. Russia in the Alexandrine Age

VI. The Unification of Italy: The Risorgimento

VII. Bismarck and the Unification of Germany

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CHAPTER 25

EUROPE IN AN AGE OF NATIONALISM,

1848–70

C

hapter 25 looks at the turbulent epoch fol-

lowing the years of Metternichian-enforced

stability. It begins with the revolutions of

1848, revolutions that convulsed two dozen

countries, ended the Orleanist monarchy in France, and

brought down the government of Metternich in Aus-

tria. The revolutions of 1848 achieved important re-

forms but did not fulfill the dreams of nationalist and

republican revolutionaries. The Old Regime—and

conservatism—survived: Europe in 1870 was still

governed by monarchs. Radicals had achieved little de-

mocratization, but gradual liberalization was under way

in Victorian Britain and Alexander II made a dramatic

attempt to modernize Russia by abolishing serfdom.

Greater change came on the battlefield. Europe ex-

perienced five wars between 1854 and 1870: the

Crimean War, the War of Italian Unification, and three

wars for the unification of Germany that ended in a de-

cisive struggle between France and Prussia. This chap-

ter describes how the modern states of Germany and

Italy emerged from these conflicts, and it analyzes the

internal developments that made unification possible.

The Origins of the Revolutions of 1848

The event that conservatives had feared for a generation

(and which Marxists predicted for the next century)—

widespread revolutions—swept Europe in 1848 (see

chronology 25.1). Governments fell in France, the Ital-

ian states, the German states, and the Austrian Empire;

revolutionary turmoil lasted for two years. Liberals and

nationalists initially won great victories. Constitutions,

bills of rights, even republics sprang up. Enthusiasm for

national autonomy, independence, or unification was so

universal that the revolutionary period became known as

“the springtime of peoples.” The alliance of nationalism

and liberalism drove monarchs to abdicate and sent their

ministers into exile. The king of France and Guizot and

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