What do you think?
Rate this book
Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849
An epic history of the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe and the charismatic figures who propelled them forward, with deep resonance and frightening parallels to today--from a renowned Cambridge historian.
Historically, 1848 has long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789, the Paris Commune of 1870, and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848, nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to more significant and lasting change than earlier upheavals. And they brought with them a new awareness of the concept of history; the men and women of 1848 saw and shaped what was happening around them through the lens of previous revolutions.
Celebrated Cambridge historian Christopher Clark describes this continental uprising as "the particle collision chamber at the center of the European nineteenth century," a place where political movements and ideas--from socialism and democratic radicalism to liberalism, nationalism, corporatism, and conservatism--were tested and transformed. The insurgents asked questions that sound modern to our ears: What happens when demands for political or economic liberty conflict with demands for social rights? How do we reconcile representative and direct forms of democracy? How is capitalism connected to social inequality? As a result of the events of 1848, the papacy of Pius IX and even the Catholic Church changed profoundly; Denmark, Piedmont and Prussia issued constitutions; Sicily founded its own all-Sicilian parliament; the Austrian Chancellor Metternich fled from Vienna. The revolutions were short-lived, but their impact was profound. Public life, administrative cultures and political thought were all transformed by this mid-century convulsion. Those who lived through them were marked for life by what they had seen and experienced.
Elegantly written, meticulously researched, and filled with a fascinating cast of charismatic figures, including the social theorist de Tochqueville and the troubled Priest de Lamennais, who struggled to reconcile his faith with politics, Revolutionary Spring is a new understanding of 1848 that offers chilling parallels to our present moment. "Looking back at the revolutions from the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it is impossible not to be struck by the resonances," Clark writes. "If a revolution is coming for us, it may look something like 1848."
Historically, 1848 has long been overshadowed by the French Revolution of 1789, the Paris Commune of 1870, and the Russian revolutions of the early twentieth century. And yet in 1848, nearly all of Europe was aflame with conflict. Parallel political tumults spread like brush fire across the entire continent, leading to more significant and lasting change than earlier upheavals. And they brought with them a new awareness of the concept of history; the men and women of 1848 saw and shaped what was happening around them through the lens of previous revolutions.
Celebrated Cambridge historian Christopher Clark describes this continental uprising as "the particle collision chamber at the center of the European nineteenth century," a place where political movements and ideas--from socialism and democratic radicalism to liberalism, nationalism, corporatism, and conservatism--were tested and transformed. The insurgents asked questions that sound modern to our ears: What happens when demands for political or economic liberty conflict with demands for social rights? How do we reconcile representative and direct forms of democracy? How is capitalism connected to social inequality? As a result of the events of 1848, the papacy of Pius IX and even the Catholic Church changed profoundly; Denmark, Piedmont and Prussia issued constitutions; Sicily founded its own all-Sicilian parliament; the Austrian Chancellor Metternich fled from Vienna. The revolutions were short-lived, but their impact was profound. Public life, administrative cultures and political thought were all transformed by this mid-century convulsion. Those who lived through them were marked for life by what they had seen and experienced.
Elegantly written, meticulously researched, and filled with a fascinating cast of charismatic figures, including the social theorist de Tochqueville and the troubled Priest de Lamennais, who struggled to reconcile his faith with politics, Revolutionary Spring is a new understanding of 1848 that offers chilling parallels to our present moment. "Looking back at the revolutions from the end of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, it is impossible not to be struck by the resonances," Clark writes. "If a revolution is coming for us, it may look something like 1848."
1152 pages, Hardcover
First published April 27, 2023
About the author
Christopher Clark
12 books503 followersSir Christopher Munro Clark FBA is an Australian historian living in the United Kingdom and Germany. He is the twenty-second Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. In 2015, he was knighted for his services to Anglo-German relations.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
July 9, 2023
Complicated Failure.
Christopher Clark begins his new book on the 1848 Revolutions of Europe by stating he had no enthusiasm for this topic as a school boy, due to its complicated nature, huge scope and finally as it is generally seen as a failure. This has reflected in this book, the Revolutions are very difficult to understand as they are pockets of uprisings loosely connected across multiple countries, with varying results. The subject is fascinating, but I challenge you to find someone who can explain the events in a detailed and coherent way.
I have said before with my reviews of Clark’s other works, that I find him hard to read. His style to me always feels wordy and I do not find him the greatest or most stylistic of writers. Unfortunately some do it much better. But I admire and respect Clark, his opinions always seem to be balanced, backed up with solid facts and research. He does not present with bias and also tackles huge overreaching topics, where most would fall. Sleepwalkers is phenomenal, Revolutionary Spring is average.
Clark writes that he could see the people of 1848 ‘in us’. What he means by that is they had come through a period of instability, the Napoleonic Wars, as we the Second World War and are now looking for change. He states that best comparison for the events is the Arab Spring of 2011 when the world watched with hope that democracy and stability would come to Middle East. Like 1848, nothing much had in fact changed.
The book follows the chronological precedent, from the world before 1848, to the last rumblings in 1849 and how this event had a impact on the impending Crimean War which was about to start. We learn the route causes of revolts, hunger, economic downturns, plague, high immortality and greedy landlords. However, Clark notes that the revolution was political and not an economic or social complaint. The ringleaders wanted change and as with all revolutions, they waited until society was suffering to pounce. He sows this together with thematic details. How the revolution effected woman, who the liberals, radicals and conservatives are and what the loosely believed. Clark states these groups were often hard to define, although the radicals were the far left, pre-Marxist types. The liberals are from the petit bourgeoisie, whom Clark sympathises with most. With this the politics of geography come into play as we also journey around Europe, from France to Germany (mostly Prussia) to the Austrian Empire and the Italian States. The world leading to the First World War is forming.
This book has a huge scope, asks and attempts to answer huge questions, but is extremely complicated and heavy. This is not a casual bedtime read. As a student of history and a reader of Clark I thought it would be easier for me, but it wasn’t. So if you want to pick this up, be prepared to re-read pages and to come away only a small portion of the context committed to memory. This book will need a couple of read throughs to take away what it has to offer, however my problem is that, that is a huge sacrifice. I will have to place it on the shelf for a few years before I could face it again. However, never say never!
Christopher Clark begins his new book on the 1848 Revolutions of Europe by stating he had no enthusiasm for this topic as a school boy, due to its complicated nature, huge scope and finally as it is generally seen as a failure. This has reflected in this book, the Revolutions are very difficult to understand as they are pockets of uprisings loosely connected across multiple countries, with varying results. The subject is fascinating, but I challenge you to find someone who can explain the events in a detailed and coherent way.
I have said before with my reviews of Clark’s other works, that I find him hard to read. His style to me always feels wordy and I do not find him the greatest or most stylistic of writers. Unfortunately some do it much better. But I admire and respect Clark, his opinions always seem to be balanced, backed up with solid facts and research. He does not present with bias and also tackles huge overreaching topics, where most would fall. Sleepwalkers is phenomenal, Revolutionary Spring is average.
Clark writes that he could see the people of 1848 ‘in us’. What he means by that is they had come through a period of instability, the Napoleonic Wars, as we the Second World War and are now looking for change. He states that best comparison for the events is the Arab Spring of 2011 when the world watched with hope that democracy and stability would come to Middle East. Like 1848, nothing much had in fact changed.
The book follows the chronological precedent, from the world before 1848, to the last rumblings in 1849 and how this event had a impact on the impending Crimean War which was about to start. We learn the route causes of revolts, hunger, economic downturns, plague, high immortality and greedy landlords. However, Clark notes that the revolution was political and not an economic or social complaint. The ringleaders wanted change and as with all revolutions, they waited until society was suffering to pounce. He sows this together with thematic details. How the revolution effected woman, who the liberals, radicals and conservatives are and what the loosely believed. Clark states these groups were often hard to define, although the radicals were the far left, pre-Marxist types. The liberals are from the petit bourgeoisie, whom Clark sympathises with most. With this the politics of geography come into play as we also journey around Europe, from France to Germany (mostly Prussia) to the Austrian Empire and the Italian States. The world leading to the First World War is forming.
This book has a huge scope, asks and attempts to answer huge questions, but is extremely complicated and heavy. This is not a casual bedtime read. As a student of history and a reader of Clark I thought it would be easier for me, but it wasn’t. So if you want to pick this up, be prepared to re-read pages and to come away only a small portion of the context committed to memory. This book will need a couple of read throughs to take away what it has to offer, however my problem is that, that is a huge sacrifice. I will have to place it on the shelf for a few years before I could face it again. However, never say never!
July 9, 2023
Christopher Clark's Revolutionary Spring offers a staggering chronicle of 1848, the year in which Europe exploded into a massive, simultaneous upheaval against the established order. Clark provides a deep dive into the conditions which generated such epochal unrest, from the nationalist movements of Italy and Germany, the tottering "July Monarchy" of France and the complicated interplay of nationalisms in the Austrian and Russian Empires. All manner of freedom struggles seized the moment: liberal and radical Frenchmen sought to redeem the lost Republic from Louis Philippe, while German nationalists viewed unification as a goal not only to strengthen their state but to ensure greater liberty against the landed classes. Independence groups, particularly Italians, Poles and Hungarians, worked to further their causes, though uniting peoples often proved easier than done; Balkan nationalists clashed with pan-Slavic movements, loyalty to the Church and peasant disdain for the landowners who often led these movements. As Clark shows, the revolution wasn't even a strictly European phenomenon; France's Republican government was forced to emancipate their slaves in the West Indies, England instituted economic reforms to forestall an uprising, and ripples of the "Spirit of '48" made their way to the United States and Australia. Not since the French Revolution of 1789 had an eruption of the social order been so widespread and profound; and though their success was mixed at best, the forces it unleashed could not be rebottled.
Clark's book is a hefty 758 pages of text in its hardback edition, much of it devoted to setting the stage with political background. While casual readers might find these earlier passages daunting, they're worth the effort so that when Clark's narrative finally arrives at the Revolution, it's easy to keep all the names and peoples straight. Clark is a witty and authoritative writer, finding telling details and amusing anecdotes such as the Czech nationalist who crashes a fancy dress ball dressed in rotting wolfskins, or dueling French and German nationalist ballads about the taste of Rhine wines! The narrative is peopled with a who's-who of 19th Century notables, from statesmen like Otto von Bismarck (who appropriated the liberal aspirations of the Frankfurt parliament to his expansion of Prussian power) and Napoleon III (shrewdly subverting France's republican movement for his own benefit) to Hungary's romantic nationalist Louis Kossuth, Italy's doomed revolutionary Giuseppe Manzini, French feminist and novelist Marie d'Agoult (known to posterity as Franz Liszt's romantic partner, a disservice to her intellect and accomplishments), Karl Marx, whose resentment at the revolution's failure shaped his development of communism and American journalist Margaret Fuller, who died fleeing Italy with her lover.
Clark shows that this heady moment collapsed through the rebels' general disorganization, allowing their enemies to outmaneuver or crush them. France's Napoleon III won an election as a republican only to assert himself as dictator, then Emperor; this Bonaparte skillfully played the revolutionary sentiments of his people against their fond memories of his uncle. The Roman Republic's espousal of religious tolerance (which spilled into anticlericalism) eroded much of its support, allowing Pope Pius IX (initially driven into exile) to invite a French invasion to restore his power. In Northern Italy and Eastern Europe, Austria, Russia and other powers simply crushed the risings with brute force. Few of the regimes established in 1848 survived the next two years, but the causes - liberal nationalism that would unify Germany and Italy, while conversely destroying Austria; ideas both for democratic reform and radical change which animated future revolutionaries; class consciousness in face of industrial development and reactionary violence; universal brotherhood and freedom from slavery and gender oppression - would dominate European (and world) politics for the next century. Perhaps Clark errs in drawing direct parallels with more recent upheavals in Europe and the United States; but it's hard not for readers to reach the same conclusions, that the issues of 1848 remain as alive and contested as ever.
Clark's book is a hefty 758 pages of text in its hardback edition, much of it devoted to setting the stage with political background. While casual readers might find these earlier passages daunting, they're worth the effort so that when Clark's narrative finally arrives at the Revolution, it's easy to keep all the names and peoples straight. Clark is a witty and authoritative writer, finding telling details and amusing anecdotes such as the Czech nationalist who crashes a fancy dress ball dressed in rotting wolfskins, or dueling French and German nationalist ballads about the taste of Rhine wines! The narrative is peopled with a who's-who of 19th Century notables, from statesmen like Otto von Bismarck (who appropriated the liberal aspirations of the Frankfurt parliament to his expansion of Prussian power) and Napoleon III (shrewdly subverting France's republican movement for his own benefit) to Hungary's romantic nationalist Louis Kossuth, Italy's doomed revolutionary Giuseppe Manzini, French feminist and novelist Marie d'Agoult (known to posterity as Franz Liszt's romantic partner, a disservice to her intellect and accomplishments), Karl Marx, whose resentment at the revolution's failure shaped his development of communism and American journalist Margaret Fuller, who died fleeing Italy with her lover.
Clark shows that this heady moment collapsed through the rebels' general disorganization, allowing their enemies to outmaneuver or crush them. France's Napoleon III won an election as a republican only to assert himself as dictator, then Emperor; this Bonaparte skillfully played the revolutionary sentiments of his people against their fond memories of his uncle. The Roman Republic's espousal of religious tolerance (which spilled into anticlericalism) eroded much of its support, allowing Pope Pius IX (initially driven into exile) to invite a French invasion to restore his power. In Northern Italy and Eastern Europe, Austria, Russia and other powers simply crushed the risings with brute force. Few of the regimes established in 1848 survived the next two years, but the causes - liberal nationalism that would unify Germany and Italy, while conversely destroying Austria; ideas both for democratic reform and radical change which animated future revolutionaries; class consciousness in face of industrial development and reactionary violence; universal brotherhood and freedom from slavery and gender oppression - would dominate European (and world) politics for the next century. Perhaps Clark errs in drawing direct parallels with more recent upheavals in Europe and the United States; but it's hard not for readers to reach the same conclusions, that the issues of 1848 remain as alive and contested as ever.
June 23, 2023
How does one say “I could not put the book down” about a 900 page book? … and a nonfiction history book on top of it?
Between 1848 and 1849 virtually the entire continent of Europe became the scene of protests, rioting, the fall of some monarchies, the near fall of others, experiments with new legislative bodies, military conflict, political repression, all resulting in thousands of individuals dead and wounded, thousands more imprisoned, and thousands more displaced. Britain escaped - it’s complicated - and the US had its conflicts later. All of this was widely covered in the media - although far less rapidly than today (no transatlantic cable yet and of course no internet). This is the period of social chaos that gave birth to “The Communist Manifesto”
If one is interested in political polarization, especially as occurs today, than this period is when many of our current dichotomies first made their appearances - left versus right; radical versus liberal versus conservative; class conflict, and movements for emancipation of all sorts. Parallel to this is a time of economic disturbances, potato famines, unemployment, labor unrest, and class warfare. This seems to be the point at which a number of conflicts initiated by Napoleon were finally tied up, at least partially, while other stories that continued into the 20th century were just getting unleashed.
The trouble, is that nothing big seemed to happen - at least compared with global warfare or the rise of national superpowers. That conclusion would be deceptive, however. Compared with the 20th century one is tempted to see the 19th as a bit boring, but no — there is much going on, throughout Europe, all at once, certain to affect the world going forward. It is hard to keep track of it all. Significant parts of European and world history after 1850 can be clearly linked back to developments that occurred during the upheavals of 1848-1849.
The only obvious parallel period that I can think of is the so-called “Arab Spring” which affected large parts of the Arab world between 2010 and 2012. I am not at all confident of the context and background so I will not push the comparison too far. There are also plenty of parallels between the times of this book and the current craziness of US and Western politics. Media? There are media aplenty although not as many - and as instantaneous - as with today. Conspiracies? Conspiracy theorists will feel right at home - and some of them were real - although many were not. Blustering authoritarians? Again, there are plenty and the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is much more sharply drawn. … and everyone seems suspicious of the Russians and the Tsar.
Christopher Clark is an extraordinary historian who wrote “The Sleepwalkers”, about how all the nations of the world drifted into World War 1 in the summer of 1013.
This book follows a rough chronological order of precursors to the revolutions, the early stages, middle stages (stagnation; counter-revolution, and later states). Within the general ordering the book comprises chapters that focus on particular topics that occurred across Europe, although in ways that differed widely across locations. Several of the chapters could be separate books or long monographs in their own right. The writing is clear and understandable and chapters even have sections that either stop and take stock of the exposition or else sum up at the conclusion.
The before and after view of the revolutions in the book - most failed and reactionary elements seemed to reassert their power - is deceptive. While the left was not successful, leftist groups learned from the experience and began to focus more on accomplishments and getting things done going forward. The same is true on the right. Post 1849 was not a simple reversion to the old days. The establishment learned from the experience and behaved very differently. This was the beginnings of urban renewal and public health initiatives. Governments made increasing investments in what we would call “infrastructure” - enhanced roads and transport, the building of sewer systems, the growth of transportation and communication systems. It was also a time of great change economically. The growth of infrastructure permitted the growth of markets and trade, which in turn increased the wealth of many and perhaps suppressed some of the prior rationales for popular discontent and revolution. To direct this urban renewal, infrastructure, and new market activity, people needed more information and so this is where the growth of public efforts at data collection and statistical activities are seen. The bourgeoisie wins and prospers relative to the aristocrats.
All of this moved in new directions, with new conflicts up through the end of the long 19th century and towards 1914.
I will stop here. There is so much going on in this book that any attempts at summaries would be pointless or even counterproductive.
Between 1848 and 1849 virtually the entire continent of Europe became the scene of protests, rioting, the fall of some monarchies, the near fall of others, experiments with new legislative bodies, military conflict, political repression, all resulting in thousands of individuals dead and wounded, thousands more imprisoned, and thousands more displaced. Britain escaped - it’s complicated - and the US had its conflicts later. All of this was widely covered in the media - although far less rapidly than today (no transatlantic cable yet and of course no internet). This is the period of social chaos that gave birth to “The Communist Manifesto”
If one is interested in political polarization, especially as occurs today, than this period is when many of our current dichotomies first made their appearances - left versus right; radical versus liberal versus conservative; class conflict, and movements for emancipation of all sorts. Parallel to this is a time of economic disturbances, potato famines, unemployment, labor unrest, and class warfare. This seems to be the point at which a number of conflicts initiated by Napoleon were finally tied up, at least partially, while other stories that continued into the 20th century were just getting unleashed.
The trouble, is that nothing big seemed to happen - at least compared with global warfare or the rise of national superpowers. That conclusion would be deceptive, however. Compared with the 20th century one is tempted to see the 19th as a bit boring, but no — there is much going on, throughout Europe, all at once, certain to affect the world going forward. It is hard to keep track of it all. Significant parts of European and world history after 1850 can be clearly linked back to developments that occurred during the upheavals of 1848-1849.
The only obvious parallel period that I can think of is the so-called “Arab Spring” which affected large parts of the Arab world between 2010 and 2012. I am not at all confident of the context and background so I will not push the comparison too far. There are also plenty of parallels between the times of this book and the current craziness of US and Western politics. Media? There are media aplenty although not as many - and as instantaneous - as with today. Conspiracies? Conspiracy theorists will feel right at home - and some of them were real - although many were not. Blustering authoritarians? Again, there are plenty and the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is much more sharply drawn. … and everyone seems suspicious of the Russians and the Tsar.
Christopher Clark is an extraordinary historian who wrote “The Sleepwalkers”, about how all the nations of the world drifted into World War 1 in the summer of 1013.
This book follows a rough chronological order of precursors to the revolutions, the early stages, middle stages (stagnation; counter-revolution, and later states). Within the general ordering the book comprises chapters that focus on particular topics that occurred across Europe, although in ways that differed widely across locations. Several of the chapters could be separate books or long monographs in their own right. The writing is clear and understandable and chapters even have sections that either stop and take stock of the exposition or else sum up at the conclusion.
The before and after view of the revolutions in the book - most failed and reactionary elements seemed to reassert their power - is deceptive. While the left was not successful, leftist groups learned from the experience and began to focus more on accomplishments and getting things done going forward. The same is true on the right. Post 1849 was not a simple reversion to the old days. The establishment learned from the experience and behaved very differently. This was the beginnings of urban renewal and public health initiatives. Governments made increasing investments in what we would call “infrastructure” - enhanced roads and transport, the building of sewer systems, the growth of transportation and communication systems. It was also a time of great change economically. The growth of infrastructure permitted the growth of markets and trade, which in turn increased the wealth of many and perhaps suppressed some of the prior rationales for popular discontent and revolution. To direct this urban renewal, infrastructure, and new market activity, people needed more information and so this is where the growth of public efforts at data collection and statistical activities are seen. The bourgeoisie wins and prospers relative to the aristocrats.
All of this moved in new directions, with new conflicts up through the end of the long 19th century and towards 1914.
I will stop here. There is so much going on in this book that any attempts at summaries would be pointless or even counterproductive.
October 28, 2023
Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849, Christopher Clark, 2023, 873 pages, Dewey 940.284, ISBN 9780525575207
Political change in Europe: monarchies are challenged; republics are mooted. Doesn't cover the flight of millions of Europeans to the United States and elsewhere.
PRECARITY
CLASSES, Nantes, Brittany, France, 1836. pp. 15-20.
1. wealthy. Average 2 children. 10-15 rooms. Average age at death 59 yrs. One death per 78 residents per year.
2. high bourgeoisie. Debutante balls. Horses, carriages.
3. prosperous bourgeoisie. Use omnibus. Frugality & work.
4. distressed bourgeoisie. Clerks, professors, shopkeepers. Expenses > means. Strictest economy.
5. poor bourgeoisie. 1,000-1,800 francs/yr. 2-3 rooms, no servants, patchy education for children. Clerks, cashiers, lesser academics. Survive; anxiety.
6. well-off workers. 600-1000 francs/yr. Without care for future. Printers, masons, carpenters, cabinetmakers. Long, hard work. Enough food, clothing, & fuel. Means = aspirations, so are happiest inhabitants.
7. poor workers. 500-600 francs/yr.
8. miserable workers. 300 francs/yr. The poorest live in sewerlike basements. Work 14 hours/day for 15-20 sous. Average age at death 31 years. One death per 17 residents per year.
300 francs/year for miserable workers:
150 bread
46 salt, butter, cabbages, potatoes
35 fuel (wood, peat)
25 rent
15 light
12 footwear
12 laundry
3 repair of broken furniture
2 change of domicile (at least once/year)
0 clothing (wear old clothes people give them)
0 doctor
0 pharmacist (sisters of charity bring meds)
A certain amount is also spent at the bar. Despite occasional charity bread, the existence of these families is horrific.
The average Parisian worker in 1830 earned 20-100 sous/day. p. 178.
Half the children of weavers and cotton spinners died before age two; half the children of merchants, businessmen, and factory directors reached age 29, as of 1840, in Haut-Rhin, France/Swiss border. pp. 20-21.
50-60% of Prussians lived on a subsistence minimum, in the 1840s. p. 34.
CROP FAILURE
Phytophthora infestans, potato-blight fungus, reached Europe from America around 1840. 60,000 Dutch and 1.1 million Irish starved to death in 1845 and 1846. The crop never recovered. pp. 44-45.
HARVEST FAILURES of 1846/7 led to hunger riots across Spain, Germany, Italy and France, including 158 riots in Prussia in April/May 1847, when food prices were highest. p. 255.
Hunger is a political phenomenon, not a natural one. p. 48.
Only through association would the working masses overcome the structural weakness of the individual. p. 53.
Estate-owning noblemen who promised to liberate the peasants faced a credibility deficit. p. 73.
Impoverishment mostly makes people inactive, rarely revolutionary. p. 88-89. Men adapt themselves to material suffering with little difficulty when they do not feel despised. p. 114.
The elite used the threat of general unrest to extract concessions from the government. "God preserve this country from the horrors of anarchy and the rage of the people!" pp. 212, 278.
ORATORY flourishes only under a free political constitution. Oratory requires clear understanding, good judgment, a lively spirit, a strong, pleasant-sounding voice and the highest dignity when presenting an address. --Robert Blum, 1845. p. 220.
In Hungary, as elsewhere, the frustration of moderate reform strengthened the case for a more radical approach. p. 232.
Hungarian lower gentry were getting a bit richer in 1801-1848, but feeling much poorer, as their conspicuous consumption exceeded their gains. p. 233.
The French government's attempt to shut down banquets featuring opposition speakers, triggered a revolution. p. 245.
Once "too little too late" has been reached, government concessions no longer mollify but only embolden the political opposition. p. 266.
REPRESSION
The only way to cultivate a 'good press' is kill all the journalists. My enemies? I have none. I have had them all shot. --Ramón María Narváez, Spanish prime minister and dictator, 1848. p. 340. Only power can rule. pp. 655, 657, 676, 680.
WHAT NOW?
All governments face insoluble problems--that is what government is for. It is in the nature of political problems that they cannot be 'solved.' p. 342.
THEY DIED FOR THE REPUBLIC
In honoring the dead revolutionaries, the new governments legitimized themselves. pp. 354-355
RESPECT
A ruler in an ermine coat still receives much more respect and obedience from Europeans than one in a frock coat. p. 384. Those who have done away with even the frock coat in the hope of making the worker's smock the sole general uniform of humanity learned that the smocks do not obey when a smock is giving the orders. p. 386.
REGIME CHANGE?
The new parliaments were conservative! They were dominated by the same people who had been the elite of the old regimes. pp. 385, 387, 407.
COUNTER-REVOLUTIONS
Many monarchies retook power. pp. 393, 404, 406-407.
SIGNIFICANCE
Representative governments, even if short-lived, paved the way for the coming nation-states by creating political infrastructure and involving people in political debates. p. 394.
SLAVERY
Slaves on Martinique revolted in 1789, 1800, 1811, 1822, and 1831. On 1848.04.12, news reached Martinique that the new French government would write a law abolishing slavery. pp. 416-417. Slaves revolted; on 1848.05.23, the governor of Martinique emancipated the slaves--before any order came from Paris. p. 418. Emancipation spread to Guadeloupe and nearby Dutch islands. Successive French governments became ever more accommodating to slaveowners' requests for indulgence; by 1858, the emancipation law was so loopholey as to be ineffective. Former slaves in Martinique were bound to their plantations by vagrancy law, a workbook system, and a head tax. p. 424. Slavery would not be suppressed in French West Africa until 1905. p. 425. [In the U.S., slavery as punishment is still legal.] But 1848 was a start. p. 426.
WOMEN
Women participated in the revolutions, but remained subservient to men. French women weren't allowed to vote until 1946. p. 437.
JEWS
The poorest European Christians had for centuries blamed economic distress on local Jews. p. 454. Jews were easier targets than wealthy and powerful Christians. p. 456. Modern anti-Semitism preached "emancipation /from/ the Jews." p. 462.
ROMA
Some 400,000 Roma were enslaved in Romania. Emancipation would wait until the mid-1850s--and is arguably incomplete even in 2023. p. 465.
PEASANTS
The new governments taxed peasants heavily, losing their support. pp. 507-511. Peasants were still obliged to provide goods and services to the lords of lands they worked. In Hungary, peasant/landlord laws would be unresolved until 1896. p. 512.
FAKE NEWS
A crowd of workers, with official preclearance, walked to the Hôtel de Ville, 1848.04.16, to present a list of candidates for command posts in the French National Guard and to demand progress on labor reform. The Provisional Government instead called out the troops to meet the demonstrators with bayonets. The crowd disbanded. National Guard units then attacked the premises of radical clubs in Paris. Reports had circulated that the clubs were preparing a violent seizure of power: lies, engineered to trigger a crisis. pp. 479-480.
US vs. THEM
Solidarity within nations accompanied embittered relations between them. p. 541.
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT?
The powers of the old regimes always dominated the revolutionaries militarily. p. 549. In Hungary, 370,000 Russians, Austrians and Croatians defeated 170,000 Hungarians' hopes of independence. p. 674.
PEASANTS
Peasants still adored their emperors. Revolutionaries made no rural inroads p. 614.
COLLABORATION
Political clubs were nuclei of revolution. pp. 638, 647.
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Pragmatic, moderate politicians win few friends in an environment polarized by conflict. p. 640, 648.
BYE!
Where /is/ the German Fatherland? In England and America! The only refuge from Russian, Prussian, and Austrian bayonets! p. 695.
WINNERS
Elites used state power to control nations. p. 747. The new governments spent money on rail, canals, telegraph, roads, and other investments to grow the economy. pp. 715-717
THE UPSHOT
We don't say that an ocean storm, a solar flare, or a massive snowfall succeeded or failed; we measure their effects. Revolutionaries largely didn't achieve what they hoped. The old regimes retook power, but now with many constitutions, parliaments, and new political avenues. pp. 745-746. No one represented rural commoners, which most Europeans were. pp. 746-747.
Political change in Europe: monarchies are challenged; republics are mooted. Doesn't cover the flight of millions of Europeans to the United States and elsewhere.
PRECARITY
CLASSES, Nantes, Brittany, France, 1836. pp. 15-20.
1. wealthy. Average 2 children. 10-15 rooms. Average age at death 59 yrs. One death per 78 residents per year.
2. high bourgeoisie. Debutante balls. Horses, carriages.
3. prosperous bourgeoisie. Use omnibus. Frugality & work.
4. distressed bourgeoisie. Clerks, professors, shopkeepers. Expenses > means. Strictest economy.
5. poor bourgeoisie. 1,000-1,800 francs/yr. 2-3 rooms, no servants, patchy education for children. Clerks, cashiers, lesser academics. Survive; anxiety.
6. well-off workers. 600-1000 francs/yr. Without care for future. Printers, masons, carpenters, cabinetmakers. Long, hard work. Enough food, clothing, & fuel. Means = aspirations, so are happiest inhabitants.
7. poor workers. 500-600 francs/yr.
8. miserable workers. 300 francs/yr. The poorest live in sewerlike basements. Work 14 hours/day for 15-20 sous. Average age at death 31 years. One death per 17 residents per year.
300 francs/year for miserable workers:
150 bread
46 salt, butter, cabbages, potatoes
35 fuel (wood, peat)
25 rent
15 light
12 footwear
12 laundry
3 repair of broken furniture
2 change of domicile (at least once/year)
0 clothing (wear old clothes people give them)
0 doctor
0 pharmacist (sisters of charity bring meds)
A certain amount is also spent at the bar. Despite occasional charity bread, the existence of these families is horrific.
The average Parisian worker in 1830 earned 20-100 sous/day. p. 178.
Half the children of weavers and cotton spinners died before age two; half the children of merchants, businessmen, and factory directors reached age 29, as of 1840, in Haut-Rhin, France/Swiss border. pp. 20-21.
50-60% of Prussians lived on a subsistence minimum, in the 1840s. p. 34.
CROP FAILURE
Phytophthora infestans, potato-blight fungus, reached Europe from America around 1840. 60,000 Dutch and 1.1 million Irish starved to death in 1845 and 1846. The crop never recovered. pp. 44-45.
HARVEST FAILURES of 1846/7 led to hunger riots across Spain, Germany, Italy and France, including 158 riots in Prussia in April/May 1847, when food prices were highest. p. 255.
Hunger is a political phenomenon, not a natural one. p. 48.
Only through association would the working masses overcome the structural weakness of the individual. p. 53.
Estate-owning noblemen who promised to liberate the peasants faced a credibility deficit. p. 73.
Impoverishment mostly makes people inactive, rarely revolutionary. p. 88-89. Men adapt themselves to material suffering with little difficulty when they do not feel despised. p. 114.
The elite used the threat of general unrest to extract concessions from the government. "God preserve this country from the horrors of anarchy and the rage of the people!" pp. 212, 278.
ORATORY flourishes only under a free political constitution. Oratory requires clear understanding, good judgment, a lively spirit, a strong, pleasant-sounding voice and the highest dignity when presenting an address. --Robert Blum, 1845. p. 220.
In Hungary, as elsewhere, the frustration of moderate reform strengthened the case for a more radical approach. p. 232.
Hungarian lower gentry were getting a bit richer in 1801-1848, but feeling much poorer, as their conspicuous consumption exceeded their gains. p. 233.
The French government's attempt to shut down banquets featuring opposition speakers, triggered a revolution. p. 245.
Once "too little too late" has been reached, government concessions no longer mollify but only embolden the political opposition. p. 266.
REPRESSION
The only way to cultivate a 'good press' is kill all the journalists. My enemies? I have none. I have had them all shot. --Ramón María Narváez, Spanish prime minister and dictator, 1848. p. 340. Only power can rule. pp. 655, 657, 676, 680.
WHAT NOW?
All governments face insoluble problems--that is what government is for. It is in the nature of political problems that they cannot be 'solved.' p. 342.
THEY DIED FOR THE REPUBLIC
In honoring the dead revolutionaries, the new governments legitimized themselves. pp. 354-355
RESPECT
A ruler in an ermine coat still receives much more respect and obedience from Europeans than one in a frock coat. p. 384. Those who have done away with even the frock coat in the hope of making the worker's smock the sole general uniform of humanity learned that the smocks do not obey when a smock is giving the orders. p. 386.
REGIME CHANGE?
The new parliaments were conservative! They were dominated by the same people who had been the elite of the old regimes. pp. 385, 387, 407.
COUNTER-REVOLUTIONS
Many monarchies retook power. pp. 393, 404, 406-407.
SIGNIFICANCE
Representative governments, even if short-lived, paved the way for the coming nation-states by creating political infrastructure and involving people in political debates. p. 394.
SLAVERY
Slaves on Martinique revolted in 1789, 1800, 1811, 1822, and 1831. On 1848.04.12, news reached Martinique that the new French government would write a law abolishing slavery. pp. 416-417. Slaves revolted; on 1848.05.23, the governor of Martinique emancipated the slaves--before any order came from Paris. p. 418. Emancipation spread to Guadeloupe and nearby Dutch islands. Successive French governments became ever more accommodating to slaveowners' requests for indulgence; by 1858, the emancipation law was so loopholey as to be ineffective. Former slaves in Martinique were bound to their plantations by vagrancy law, a workbook system, and a head tax. p. 424. Slavery would not be suppressed in French West Africa until 1905. p. 425. [In the U.S., slavery as punishment is still legal.] But 1848 was a start. p. 426.
WOMEN
Women participated in the revolutions, but remained subservient to men. French women weren't allowed to vote until 1946. p. 437.
Forward! call the apostles of light
Let us be torches of truth and right.
Backward! howl the men of the dark
Hide from the brightness of the spark.
Forward we struggle and forward we strive
The will to action keeps us alive.
Backward, if safety and wealth you prefer
Back to the darkness of things as they were.
--Kathinka Zitz-Halein, 1850. pp. 440-441.
JEWS
The poorest European Christians had for centuries blamed economic distress on local Jews. p. 454. Jews were easier targets than wealthy and powerful Christians. p. 456. Modern anti-Semitism preached "emancipation /from/ the Jews." p. 462.
ROMA
Some 400,000 Roma were enslaved in Romania. Emancipation would wait until the mid-1850s--and is arguably incomplete even in 2023. p. 465.
PEASANTS
The new governments taxed peasants heavily, losing their support. pp. 507-511. Peasants were still obliged to provide goods and services to the lords of lands they worked. In Hungary, peasant/landlord laws would be unresolved until 1896. p. 512.
FAKE NEWS
A crowd of workers, with official preclearance, walked to the Hôtel de Ville, 1848.04.16, to present a list of candidates for command posts in the French National Guard and to demand progress on labor reform. The Provisional Government instead called out the troops to meet the demonstrators with bayonets. The crowd disbanded. National Guard units then attacked the premises of radical clubs in Paris. Reports had circulated that the clubs were preparing a violent seizure of power: lies, engineered to trigger a crisis. pp. 479-480.
US vs. THEM
Solidarity within nations accompanied embittered relations between them. p. 541.
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT?
The powers of the old regimes always dominated the revolutionaries militarily. p. 549. In Hungary, 370,000 Russians, Austrians and Croatians defeated 170,000 Hungarians' hopes of independence. p. 674.
PEASANTS
Peasants still adored their emperors. Revolutionaries made no rural inroads p. 614.
COLLABORATION
Political clubs were nuclei of revolution. pp. 638, 647.
Build community. Organize. When people get together, all sorts of things are possible. If you’re isolated, you’re going to break.
--Noam Chomsky, /Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky/, pp. 121, 185 of 400.
The good things that have been done, the reforms . . . all of that was not done by government edict. . . . It was all done by citizens' movements. And then keep in mind that great movements in the past have arisen from small movements, from tiny clusters of people that have gotten together here and there. If you have a movement strong enough, it doesn't matter who's in the White House. What really matters is what are people doing, and what are people saying, what are people demanding. --Howard Zinn, /You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train/
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
Pragmatic, moderate politicians win few friends in an environment polarized by conflict. p. 640, 648.
BYE!
Where /is/ the German Fatherland? In England and America! The only refuge from Russian, Prussian, and Austrian bayonets! p. 695.
WINNERS
Elites used state power to control nations. p. 747. The new governments spent money on rail, canals, telegraph, roads, and other investments to grow the economy. pp. 715-717
THE UPSHOT
We don't say that an ocean storm, a solar flare, or a massive snowfall succeeded or failed; we measure their effects. Revolutionaries largely didn't achieve what they hoped. The old regimes retook power, but now with many constitutions, parliaments, and new political avenues. pp. 745-746. No one represented rural commoners, which most Europeans were. pp. 746-747.
November 19, 2023
Droht eine Revolution?
„Von einer nichtrevolutionären Lösung der Polykrise, mit der wir derzeit konfrontiert sind, scheinen wir sehr weit entfernt zu sein.“
Wie der Satz gemeint ist, wird nach der Lektüre dieses eintausend Seiten starken Werkes naturgemäß klarer, aber auch so löst er sicherlich ein gewisses Schaudern aus.
Umfassend, monumental, vielschichtig, vielfältig, breit und konsequent europäisch angelegt ist dieses Buch, das dem Leser eine Herausforderung beschert, für die er reich belohnt wird. Tatsächlich werden die Vorgänge um 1848/49 klarer, denn Clark räumt viele Mythen beiseite (allein der Fokus vieler Darstellungen auf die nationale Entwicklung verschleiert eine Menge) und lässt den historisch Interessierten teilhaben an hochdramatischen und immer wieder erstaunlichen Entwicklungen und Ereignissen.
Tatsächlich möchte ich dieses Buch nicht missen, denn es hat mir auch Antworten auf Fragen gegeben, die dort gar nicht gestellt werden. Kann das Volk in Russland Putin stürzen? Das sieht ganz schlecht aus, weil das Regime im Kreml das konsequent umgesetzt hat, was viele Staaten 1848 versäumten bzw. der Aufruhr einen anderen Charakter hatte, als die vorangegangenen und erwarteten.
Für mich gemeinsam mit Neil Price „Die wahre Geschichte der Wikinger“ Sachbuch des Jahres 2023. Ich bin begeistert.
„Von einer nichtrevolutionären Lösung der Polykrise, mit der wir derzeit konfrontiert sind, scheinen wir sehr weit entfernt zu sein.“
Wie der Satz gemeint ist, wird nach der Lektüre dieses eintausend Seiten starken Werkes naturgemäß klarer, aber auch so löst er sicherlich ein gewisses Schaudern aus.
Umfassend, monumental, vielschichtig, vielfältig, breit und konsequent europäisch angelegt ist dieses Buch, das dem Leser eine Herausforderung beschert, für die er reich belohnt wird. Tatsächlich werden die Vorgänge um 1848/49 klarer, denn Clark räumt viele Mythen beiseite (allein der Fokus vieler Darstellungen auf die nationale Entwicklung verschleiert eine Menge) und lässt den historisch Interessierten teilhaben an hochdramatischen und immer wieder erstaunlichen Entwicklungen und Ereignissen.
Tatsächlich möchte ich dieses Buch nicht missen, denn es hat mir auch Antworten auf Fragen gegeben, die dort gar nicht gestellt werden. Kann das Volk in Russland Putin stürzen? Das sieht ganz schlecht aus, weil das Regime im Kreml das konsequent umgesetzt hat, was viele Staaten 1848 versäumten bzw. der Aufruhr einen anderen Charakter hatte, als die vorangegangenen und erwarteten.
Für mich gemeinsam mit Neil Price „Die wahre Geschichte der Wikinger“ Sachbuch des Jahres 2023. Ich bin begeistert.
May 5, 2024
absolutely amazing but very long
This is one of the best history books I have ever read - and the situation in Európe at the time is in many respects similar to today
This is one of the best history books I have ever read - and the situation in Európe at the time is in many respects similar to today
November 7, 2023
Monumental work!
For me was so much new information that I can not even try to evaluate this book properly. Lookking foward to read (listen to) more books from the autor, mister Christopher Clark.
For me was so much new information that I can not even try to evaluate this book properly. Lookking foward to read (listen to) more books from the autor, mister Christopher Clark.
September 11, 2023
I'm of two minds on this book. If you're a historian looking for a deeply-researched, deeply-sourced detailed analysis of the 1848 revolutions, this is a 4-star book. And the 1,100+ page count is actually a positive for you.
However, if you're a more general reader with an interest in history and you picked up this book looking to gain a better understanding of a confusing bit of European history (and/or had your interest piqued by all the comparisons to the Arab Spring revolutions), this book is overkill. You'll be left adrift by the author's expectation that you're already conversant in earlier 19th-century European uprisings, and your eyes will glaze over at the level of detail around each country's revolution.
As you might have guessed, I'm more the latter. And though I did find myself skimming sizable chunks of this book, I learned a lot. I came away with a solid understanding of the 1848 revolutions -- their causes, why they succumbed to counter-revolutions and yet still had an impact on European societies going forward. There's a really good 500-page generalist history of the 1848 revolutions buried among these 1,100 pages. I'd give that book a 4-star rating. But in its current state, it's a 3.5-star book for me.
However, if you're a more general reader with an interest in history and you picked up this book looking to gain a better understanding of a confusing bit of European history (and/or had your interest piqued by all the comparisons to the Arab Spring revolutions), this book is overkill. You'll be left adrift by the author's expectation that you're already conversant in earlier 19th-century European uprisings, and your eyes will glaze over at the level of detail around each country's revolution.
As you might have guessed, I'm more the latter. And though I did find myself skimming sizable chunks of this book, I learned a lot. I came away with a solid understanding of the 1848 revolutions -- their causes, why they succumbed to counter-revolutions and yet still had an impact on European societies going forward. There's a really good 500-page generalist history of the 1848 revolutions buried among these 1,100 pages. I'd give that book a 4-star rating. But in its current state, it's a 3.5-star book for me.
July 6, 2023
Well written and constructed overview of the upheavals, political and social, of 1848; noteworthy that it includes sections on the European colonies in America and Africa, considering the issues of slavery and imperialism. Good on the fissures within the initial revolutionary surge, especially over the social question, that helped permit the counterrevolution. Interesting that Clark uses the Arab Spring as a contemporary analogy when a few years ago it would have been 1968: history rolls on.
September 23, 2023
At 754 pages, this is easily the best single-volume account of the 1848 revolutions. Not only does it break down the otherwise difficult to understand disparate revolutions of that year, it does so in an incredibly readable way. I found this book hard to put down, an incredible feat for a nearly 800 page academic non-fiction work.
December 5, 2023
رشد و گسترش شتابان شهرهای صنعتی، یعنی شهرهایی که حول محور کارخانجات ماشینیِ نوین پس از انقلاب صنعتی در نقاط مختلف اروپا، یکی پس از دیگری پدیدار شدند، در اوایل سدة نوزدهم تمرکزهای جمعیتی بیسابقهای را دامن زد که شاید بتوانم آن را یک نقطة عطفِ متمایز در فرگشت شهرنشینی بنامم. این رخداد موجب شد تا بخشی از اعضای طبقات متوسط شهرِ صنعتیِ نوین، کسانی که امکان امرارمعاش از طریق تدریس و تحقیق در مؤسسات آموزشی و دانشگاههای نوین را داشتند، آرامآرام درگیر یک مسئلة نوین بشوند: «مسئلة اجتماعی». نوعِ رویکرد آنها به این مسئله، رویکردی فنّی، علمی و تجربی بود و موضوعِ مطالعه و پژوهشِ «آماری» آنها هم، شرایط زندگی در محلات کارگرنشین و اوضاع و احوال انسانهای در-حاشیه-ماندة این شهرهای نوظهور. موضوعاتی مثل بهداشت عمومی، امکانِ دسترسی برابر به آموزش و پرورش، خدمات عمومی مثل درمانگاه یا کتابخانه و نظا��ر آن، رفتهرفته به اجزاء اصلی «مسئلة اجتماعی» تبدیل شد.
از همان اوایل سدة نوزدهم معلوم بود که لندن، برلین، پاریس، وین و رُم، و در ادامه نیز پراگ و بودا و پست و دیگر شهرهای روبهتوسعه-نهادة اروپای غربی و مرکزی، شاهد ظهور جبهههای اجتماعی مختلف شدهاند که با گذر زمان و نزدیکتر شدن به میانههای آن سده، مرزبندیها و خطکشیهای میان آنها روشنی هر چه بیشتری پیدا میکرد. از یک سو محافظهکارانی بودند که در مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی، برنامههای حمایتی و صندوقهای کمکهای انساندوستانه را، بهخصوص تحت حمایت دربارهای اروپایی، راهحل طبیعی میدانستند. از سوی دیگر، لیبرالهای عموماً موّلدِ صنعت و تولید بودند که طبقات میانی جامعة جدید را شکل دادند و راهحل درست مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی را رشد و توسعة هر چه بیشتر فناوری و صنعتیشدنِ هرچه بیشتر جامعه در همة ابعاد آن، برای افزایش هر چه بیشتر سرمایه و بهرهمندی تعداد هر چه بیشتر مردم از عوایدِ مادّی و معنوی آن در نظر میآوردند. در نهایت، رادیکالهایی نمایان شدند که در کل، واکنشی بنیانشکن در مواجهه با صنعتیشدن و شهرنشینی برآمده از آن از خود بروز دادند و بر آن بودند که آدمی باید از این خواب گران برخیزد و دوباره به شرایط طبیعی خویش بازگردد. بااینحال هر سة این جریانها در یک اصل با یکدیگر اشتراک داشتند و از «وفاداران متعصبِ دینمدار قلمرو امپراتوریِ مقدّس روم» متمایز میشدند: بیشتر اعضای آنها از فلسفه به سمت علوم طبیعی گرایش داشتند و بر این باور بودند که علم بهترین توضیح را برای وضع بشر دارد و آیندة درخشان انسان در بهرهگیری نظاممند از دستاوردهای آن، بهخصوص در مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی نهفته است.
یکی از شخصیّتهای برجستة سدة نوزدهم سن-سیمون و اصول وی بود که اثری قابل توجه بر رویدادها و افکار اروپائیان در طول این سده برجای گذاشت. حتی لویی ناپلئون بناپارت سوم هم پس از کودتا، عملاً در مسیری گام برداشت که سن-سیمون و پیروانش برای او هموار کرده بودند. وی آورندة گفتمان نواندیشیِ مسیحی بود؛ نوآوریهای فنی را به عنوان رهایندگانِ انسان از چنگال بردگی و خرافات و فقر و دردمندی میستود؛ اتحاد همة اروپائیان را برای دستیابی به آیندة درخشان ترویج میکرد؛ انرژیهای جنسی را محور اصلی نوآوریهای اجتماعی نوین میدانست و بهخصوص بر نقش زنان و جنبشهای زنانه در توسعة جوامع تأکید میکرد؛ در پی تأسیس کلیسای برابریطلبِ نو و آن مسیحیتی بود که عشق برادرانه را در قلب نظمِ اجتماعیِ کمالیافته بنشاند. روشنفکران چپ و صنعتگران و کارگران رادیکال در جریان رخدادهایی که به بهار انقلابیِ اروپای سدة نوزدهم (۱۸۴۸-۱۸۴۹) معروف شد، زبان و تصاویر کاتولیک عوامانه را علیه حکومتهای سلطنتی به کار میبردند و متفکران کلیدی آنها دست به کار جداسازی ”مسیحیت واقعی“ از ”مسیحیت بازاری“ شدند تا ایمان مسیحیت راستین را با استدلالهای رفرمیستی یا سوسیالیستی در هم آمیزند. وسوسه میشوم که علی شریعتی را یک نسخة سن-سیمونیِ صادراتی بنامم! او که از ابوذر یک کمونیست تمامعیار ساخت و اسلامِ علوی را جنبش تمامعیار زحمتکشان دانست. کمونیسم برای متفکرِ فرانسویِ رادیکال، اتین کابه چیزی جز ”مسیحیت در عمل“ نبود!
پس از سن-سیمونیها، چپهای رادیکال و لیبرالهای میانه و حتی مایل به چپ تا حدود زیادی با یکدیگر هممسیر شدند. هرچند در ادامه اوضاع و احوال چنان پیش رفت که با رادیکالیزهشدن هر چه بیشتر چپها، لیبرالها و محافظهکاران نزدیکی بیشتری با دربارهای سنتی یافتند و به جستجوی راههایی مؤثرتر برای مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی و ایجاد تغییرات واقعیتر برآمدند. از آن سو، صحنة اجتماعی برای چپهای رادیکال (و نه لیبرالهای چپ) که به دنبال تأسیس یک دولتِ مقتدرِ همهکاره و مسلّط بر جان و مال مردم بودند، نمایش و تئاتر بسیار مهم بود. آنها در میادین و خیابانها و قهوهخانهها، انرژی بسیاری را صرف بافتن و تافتن داستانها، نمایشنامهها، شعرها و رقصها و آوازها میکردند تا بلکه با این کار خویش به وقایع حال و هوایی حماسی ببخشند و آنها را به سمت جلو سوق دهند. ت��اترهای خیابانی به دانشجوهای رادیکال و بخشهایی از رادیکالهای طبقة متوسط شهری این امکان را میداد تا در لحظات سرشارتری از هیجانات جمعی زندگی کنند، سدها را بشکنند، خودِ خصوصی خویش را با یک هدفِ عمومی درهمآمیزند. این منظرة نمایشی و بداهه این ذهنیت را بوجود میآورد که گویی انسانِ انقلابی، به عنوان یگانه عاملیت تقدیر خویش، بهشکلی زنده در حال نگارش و ویرایش تاریخِ خویش است و خود و تاریخ را همزمان میسازد.
اروپای میانة سدة نوزدهم، بهویژه در سالهای منتهی به ۱۸۴۸ و پس از آن، به راستی بستر ظهور و بروز مدلهای اجتماعی-سیاسی اگر نه بیسابقه، دستکم کمسابقهای بود. ناسیونالیسم یکی از محصولات پر زرق و برق این بوتة جوشان و زایا بود. میهنپرستیِ ناسیونالیستی زمانی سر برآورد که فرهنگدانان و فرهنگگرایان الیت نقاط مختلف اروپا تصمیم گرفتند برنامههای فرهنگی خویش را با ابزارهای سیاسی به اجرا بگذارند. در این صحنه، هیچچیز به اندازة زبان کارآمد نبود. ولی مشکلی عمیق وجود داشت که به تناقضهایی بعضاً مضحک دامن میزد. هر چند ناسیونالیسم نورسته از احساسات عمیق میهنپرستان برای بازیابی یک شکوه کهنه و باستانی و تلاش برای احیاء و رستاخیز آن سرچشمه میگرفت، ولی بجز زبانِ مادری ابزار چندانی برای بروز و ظهور در چنته نداشت. سرزمینهای اروپایی بهشدت در هم گره خورده بودند و در عمل، امکان ناچیزی برای شکلگیری ناسیونالیسمهای سرزمینی وجود داشت و بزرگترین دشمن ناسیونالیستهای اروپایی گذشته و حال را ژئوپولتیک در بر میشود که تا مدتها برگ برندة محافظهکاران و وفاداران به نظم سنتی بود. اما شکلدادن به ناسیونالیسمهای زبانی هم در اروپای ساکن زیر خیمة میراث «امپراتوری مقدّس روم» ساده نبود. یک مشکل نغز آنجا بود که از مجارستان تا بلژیک، از پروسیه تا سیسیلی، بسیاری از میهنپرستان اساساً نمیتوانستند به زبان مادری خویش صحبت کنند و یا اینکه آن را بسیار کم میدانستند!! آنها در محافل خصوصیتر خویش عموماً به آلمانی یا حتی لاتین با هم ارتباط میگرفتند و بیشتر ناسیونالیستهای مجار فرانسوی یا آلمانی را هنگام به وجود آمدن کشمکشهای پیچیده، به راحتی جایگزین «زبان مادری» خود میساختند که در آن زمانها صرفاً به چند «فعل» و «واژة» محدود تقلیل مییافت!!! از طرفی هم، با آنکه حس وحدت ملّی به وجود آمده هوش از سر بخشی پر نفوذ از الیتهای میانهرو میبرد، فریبنده هم بود. بسیاری از دهقانانی که به راحتی زیر خیمة ملیگرایی جمع میشدند، به راحتی هم میتوانستند از آن فاصله بگیرند (اگر وقفهای هر چند موقت در منافع و خواستههایشان به وجود میآمد). در جایی مثل آلمان، که آن را یکی از مراکز بنیادین شکلگیری و گسترش ناسیونالیسم اروپایی میشناسیم، پروتستانها و کاتولیکها، جمهوریخواهان رادیکال و لیبرالهای میانهرو هرگز دید یکسانی نسبت به ناسیونالیسم و میهندوستی نداشتند.
فارغ از پاتریوتیزم ناسیونالیستی، میل به جمهوریخواهی، بهخصوص نزد لیبرالهای مایل به چپ و رادیکالهای دموکرات به شدت بالا بود. جمهوریخواهی در بافت اروپای سدة نوزدهم به خودی خود یک امر به غایت رادیکال محسوب میشد و بسیاری از فعالان و حامیان اصلیِ آن به ناگزیر به شکلی مخفیانه و در ’خاموشی‘ فعالیت میکردند. اساساً جمهوریخواهی بدون ”فراموشخانه“ و ”دسیسهچینی“ در آن بافت و سیاق چندان امکانپذیر نبود. جمهوریخواهان رادیکال انجمنهای مخفی و سلسلهمراتبی خودشان را راه میانداختند و زیر ستارة پنجگوشِ «ایشتار» و بیرقِ سرخ سوسیالیسمِ دموکرات خویش جمع میشدند و میکوشیدند تا با تأسیس یک جمهوریِ تمامیتگرا، جامعه را از همة مالکیت خصوصی پاک کنند. آنها دولتی میخواستند که به قول لودویکو بونارروتی، مثل یک مادر برای همة اعضای جامعة خود هزینة تحصیل، غذا و کار برابر را تأمین کند. آنها این مطالبه را خواست اصلی همة فیلسوفان جهان میدانستند و تنها راهِ بازسازی و بازگشت به «اورشلیم» به شمار میآوردند! همین فراموشخانهها بودند که در شرق مدیترانه جمهوری «ترکان جوان» را ساختند تا همچون موریانه پایههای پوسیدة امپراتوریِ کهنة عثمانی را تا آخرین قطعه ببلعد و در دهة ۱۹۲۰، ایران را در آستانة تبدیلشدن به یک جمهوری پیش کشیدند.
میگویند یک سرزمین، انگلستان، هرگز طعم آشوبها و جنبشهای بهار انقلابی اروپایی را نچشید. حتی میهندوستان انگلیسی همین را نه تنها وجه تمایز و برتری خود نسبت به اروپای قارهای، بلکه دستاویزی برای گسستن از پادشاهیهای متحد بریتانیا میکنند تا یکبار دیگر انگلستان را به آن شکوه و یگانگی مثالین خویش بازگردانند! البته اوضاع به این سادگیها هم نیست. بهار انقلابی در انگلستان هم اتفاق افتاد، اما نه در سرزمین اصلی و متروپولیس آن؛ بلکه در حاشیههای استعماری. فشارهای مالیاتی به موقع از روی شانههای مردم متروپولیس برداشته شد و روی زمینداران، کارگران، مزدبگیران و بردگان حاشیههای استعماری سنگینی کرد و از اتفاق، در آنجا آشوبهای دردناکی را هم موجب شد. الگوی بهتر مواجهه با بهار انقلابی را پادشاهی هلند در اختیار میگذارد. پادشاه هلند با رصدکردن اوضاع و احوال سرزمینهای دیگر، ��هویژه فرانسه و ایتالیا و اتریش، بهشکلی هوشمندانه برنامههای اصلاحاتی همهجانبهای را برای مواجههای معقول با مسئلة اجتماعی طرحریزی کرده و به اجرا میگذارد. دست هلند برای این کار بسیار باز بود و از نیروهای مشاوره و برنامة خبرهای برخوردار بود و البته نظام پادشاهیِ مردمداری هم داشت. هر چه باشد، همة ما میدانیم که هلند منشأ و خاستگاه اصلی رنسانس عقلانی-حقوقی اروپا بود و نخستین جایی که در آن حوزههای خصوصی و عمومی، بسیار پیش از نقاط دیگر اروپا (به استثناء بریتانیا) بر مبنای نوزایی قانون طبیعی رومی از یکدیگر تفکیک شدند. هلند از عطر شکوفههای بهاری ۱۸۴۸ بسیار لذّت میبرد زمانی که بیشتر جاهای دیگر اروپا غرق در کشمکش و درگیری و خونریزی بودند!
نکتة مهم در مورد بهار انقلابی، «اروپاییبودن» و «تراملیّت» نهفته در آن بود. جالب است که انواع ایدههای بیسابقه و کمسابقه، از لیبرالیسم گرفته تا سوسیالیسم، دموکراسی رادیکال، رادیکالیسم برابریطلب، سوسیال دموکراسی و ناسیونالیسم، هر کدام در نقاط متفاوتی از این قاره دست بالا را میان فعالان مدنی و سیاسی به خود گرفتند، اما چند عنصر بنیادین در همة آنها مشترک بود و به کل جریانات سدة نوزدهم خصلتی «تراملّی» و به معنای واقعی کلمه «اروپایی» میبخشید. این مشترکات در همهجا قابل توجه بود: مطالبة قانون اساسی، آزادیهای انسانی و مدنی، آزادی مطبوعات، آزادی انجمنها و اجتماعات، حق برخورداری «ملتها» از «سپاه ملّی»، اصلاح حق رأی. این عناصر عمومی لیبرال اروپای سدة نوزدهم را میتوان حاصل چندین دهه گفتگوها و مجادلههای استثنایی ”تراملّی“ به شمار آورد.
رادیکالها سهم چندانی از بهار انقلابی اروپایی نبردند؛ فقط توانستند جوامع آرمانی خود را با کمی تأخیر، در طول سدة بیستم به سرزمینهای شرقی اوراسیا و امریکای جنوبی و مرکزی صادر کنند و مردم آن سرزمینها را به خاک سیاه بنشانند!! آنچه در عمل در بسامد بهار انقلابی ار��پا اتفاق افتاد، شکلگیری دولتهای موقّت بسیار معتدل، حتی با مشارکت جدّی محافظهکاران و سنتگرایان میانهروتر بود که اتفاقاً به شکلگیری برنامههای اجتماعی بسیار موفقیتآمیزی انجامید. رادیکالهایی مثل مارکس و انگلس از این مینالیدند که مردمان رنجکشیده هنوز به آگاهی طبقاتی مطلوب خود دست نیافتهاند و نسبت به شرایط خویش در «عقبماندگی» به سر میبرند. در عین حال، لیبرالها نیز هر چه بیشتر از شدّتیابی رادیکالیسم چپ به وحشت افتاده و میترسیدند، بیشتر به سمت نیروهای نظم اجتماعی گرایش مییافتند. لیبرالها هر جا که دولت را در اختیار میگرفتند، باشگا��های سیاسی دموکراتیک، مجامع عمومی و تظاهرات را همواره تحت نظارت پلیس و اقدامات امنیتی پیشگیرانه قرار میدادند و همزمان، چشم به روی همة هجمههایی که محافظهکاران سنتگرا به مشروعیت انقلاب روا میداشتند میبستند تا از رادیکالیزهشدن فضا پرهیز کنند. محافظهکاران و لیبرالهای راستگرا هم رفتهرفته از جنبههای مختلف اجتماعی «انقلابزدایی» کرده و برنامههای ضدانقلابی را با فراغ بال بیشتری پیش میبردند. در داخل مجامع انقلابی، لیبرالها به شکلی فزاینده تمایل یافتند تا همراه و متهد با دشمنان محافظهکار سابق خویش، علیه چپهای رادیکال و حتی میانهرو موضع بگیرند.
این وضعیت را ذکر مثالی از رخدادهای چند سال اخیر ایران به خوبی روشن میکند. تابستان سال ۱۴۰۱ شاهد خیزش جنبشی بود که به «جنبش مهسا» معروف شد و با مشارکت بیسابقة دیاسپورای ایرانیان خارج از کشور، فراگیری و گسترش جهانی بیسابقهای یافت. عناصر اصلی جنبش مهسا با شعار ’زن، زندگی، آزادی‘، عملاً عناصری رادیکال بودند و بروز آنها در کوچه و خیابان توسط نسل «زِد»، از بوسههای همجنسگرایانه گرفته تا نمایش جنسیِ بدنِ زن در حالات مختلف، عملاً رادیکالترین نیروها را دور خود جمع کرد؛ از رادیکالیسم جنسی گرفته (که به روشنی روی استیج برلین رونمایی شد!) تا رادیکالیسم هویتی و انواع جریانهای «اینترسکشنال» اجتماعی دیگر. و به چشم دیدیم که چطور مطالبات این جنبش رادیکالیستی هر چه بیشتر و بیشتر خواستهها و مطالبات الیتِ روشنفکر با محوریت ایرانیان دانشگاهنشین خارج از کشور را منعکس میکرد و پیش میکشید، لیبرالهای میانهرو (هم چپ و هم البته بیشتر راست) داخلی (شاید بتوان بخشی از تحولخواهان و اصلاحطلبان را در این دسته جای داد)، با سرعتی بیشتر خودشان را کنار کشیدند و به بازگشت محافظهکارانة نظم در جامعه روی خوشتری نشان دادند.
از آن طرف، آن بدنة فرودست که اساساً دغدغههای الیت اجتماعی و رادیکال برج عاجنشین را ندارد و در دی ۹۶ و آبان ۹۸ برای ”یک لقمه نان“ دست به شورشهای کور زد، همراه با رادیکالتر شدن «زن، زندگی، آزادی» که عملاً در سیطرة کنسرتهای پرزرقوبرق و شو-آفهای قشرِ بورژوای الیت غربنشین درآمده بود، فاصلهاش با آن جنبش بیشتر و بیشتر شد و خود را با جریانهای لیبرالِ میانهرو (مایل به راست) و ملیگراتر و رهبران آن هر لحظه نزدیکتر و همدلتر احساس کرد و دید. درست همین اتفاق در اروپای سدة نوزدهم و در جریانهای ’ضد انقلاب‘، چنان کارل مارکس را برآشفت که این قشر دردکشیده را ”عقبمانده“هایی خواند که علاقهای به تغییر شرایط خویش ندارند و آنها را از اینکه به جریانهای محافظهکار و لیبرالهای میانهرو و عموماً ناسیونالیست رأی داده و دلبستهاند و به قدر کافی ’آگاهی طبقاتی‘ نیافتهاند، شماتت و سرزنش کرد. مشکل بزرگ مارکس که در لابهلای خطوط این کتاب به خوبی نمایان میشود، علاوهبر درک معیوب و منحرف او از تاریخ فرهنگ انسان، این هم بود که یک مدل ذهنی دلبخواهی را پرورش داده بود و به هر نحو ممکن میخواست تا آن را بر واقعیتهای بیرونی تحمیل کند؛ به عبارتی ماتریالیسم او از ایدآلیسم هگلی به مراتب ایدهآلگراتر بود!! این دقیقاً همان مشکلی است که رادیکالهای امروز، خواه در ایران یا در غرب بدان دچار هستند و متأثر از آن همواره ناکام ماندهاند.
در جریان بهار انقلابی ۱۸۴۸ و دولتهای موقت پس از آن هم شاهدیم که مسئلة دهقانان و رعایا برای رادیکالها و لیبرالهای عمدتاً شهرنشین برآمده از بستر صنعتی بورژوا (مثل شخص مارکس و انگلس) امری ناشناخته بود، درحالیکه محافظهکاران، لیبرالهای دست راستی (عمدتاً زمینداران و ملّاکان) و درباریان این قشر را خوب میشناختند و میتوانستند به موقع با وعدههای مؤثرتر و عملیتر، آراء و قلوب آنها را به سوی خویش سرازیر کنند. واقعیت این بود که طبقات فرودست دهقانی-کارگر عملاً یک معمای ناشناختنی برای الیتهای «جهانوطنی» باهوش بودند و هنوز هم هستند. رشد راستگراییهای عموماً ناسیونالیست با مشارکت همین طبقات فرودست که امروز در جایجای اروپا، امریکای جنوبی و مرکزی و دیگر نقاط جهان، حتی «سرزمینِ تکشاخهای کانادا»، شاهد آنیم، هرگز اتفاقی نیست. اتفاقاً، خلاف باور معوج مارکس و انگلس، طبقات فرودست از جایگاه خودشان آگاهی کامل دارند و بنابر هوش زیستی، خوب میدانند چه کسانی و کدام جریانها منافع آنها را بیشتر و بهتر تأمین کرده و خواهند کرد!
برنامة توسعه در تقابل با ایدئولوژی رادیکال (مثال لوئی ناپلئون بناپارت سوم)؛ یکی از ثمرات جدّی و شایان توجّه پسا بهارِ انقلابیِ اروپا، شکلگیری و ظهور دولتهای راستگرایی بود که کمترین شباهت را به دولتهای محافظهکار پیش از بهار اروپایی نداشتند. بهار انقلابی هر چند به زهرِ تلخ رادیکالها تبدیل شد، مردمانِ تشنة لیبرالیسم و بهبود شرایط اقتصادی و اجتماعی را عمیقاً به آینده امیدوار کرد. دولتهای جدید یکی پس از دیگری با مشارکت و آمیزش راستها و چپهای میانهرو تشکیل کابینه دادند. در فرانسة ۱۸۵۲، لویی ناپلئون بناپارت سوم، برادرزادة ناپلئونِ بزرگ که با کمک بریتانیا از لندن بازگشته بود، با کودتا حکومت فرانسه را در دست گرفت و هر سال نزد فرانسویان جایگاه محترمی یافت. او یک شخصیت اوتوکرات و محافظهکار داشت و دولتی دست راستی را هم تأسیس کرد، ولی آرمانهای سن-سیمون و هواداران او را به راحتی میشد در برنامههای توسعهای او مشاهده کرد. راهسازی، توسعة کارخانجات، بهبود شرایط بهداشتی شهرها، گسترش خدمات عمومی تنها بخشهایی از دولت توسعهگرای ناپلئون سوم بود. چنین بود که خلاف میل و خواست رادیکالهایی نظیر نیچه که در میانهروهای لیبرال، آدمهای میانمایه و بیخاصیت میدیدند، در طول نیمة دوم سدة نوزدهم مسئلة اجتماعی از حالت آرمانگرایانه به برنامهای اداری-اجرایی دگردیسی یافت و رشد و توسعة سرزمینهای اروپای غربی و مرکزی را تا آستانة جنگ جهانی نخست به همراه آورد.
از همان اوایل سدة نوزدهم معلوم بود که لندن، برلین، پاریس، وین و رُم، و در ادامه نیز پراگ و بودا و پست و دیگر شهرهای روبهتوسعه-نهادة اروپای غربی و مرکزی، شاهد ظهور جبهههای اجتماعی مختلف شدهاند که با گذر زمان و نزدیکتر شدن به میانههای آن سده، مرزبندیها و خطکشیهای میان آنها روشنی هر چه بیشتری پیدا میکرد. از یک سو محافظهکارانی بودند که در مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی، برنامههای حمایتی و صندوقهای کمکهای انساندوستانه را، بهخصوص تحت حمایت دربارهای اروپایی، راهحل طبیعی میدانستند. از سوی دیگر، لیبرالهای عموماً موّلدِ صنعت و تولید بودند که طبقات میانی جامعة جدید را شکل دادند و راهحل درست مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی را رشد و توسعة هر چه بیشتر فناوری و صنعتیشدنِ هرچه بیشتر جامعه در همة ابعاد آن، برای افزایش هر چه بیشتر سرمایه و بهرهمندی تعداد هر چه بیشتر مردم از عوایدِ مادّی و معنوی آن در نظر میآوردند. در نهایت، رادیکالهایی نمایان شدند که در کل، واکنشی بنیانشکن در مواجهه با صنعتیشدن و شهرنشینی برآمده از آن از خود بروز دادند و بر آن بودند که آدمی باید از این خواب گران برخیزد و دوباره به شرایط طبیعی خویش بازگردد. بااینحال هر سة این جریانها در یک اصل با یکدیگر اشتراک داشتند و از «وفاداران متعصبِ دینمدار قلمرو امپراتوریِ مقدّس روم» متمایز میشدند: بیشتر اعضای آنها از فلسفه به سمت علوم طبیعی گرایش داشتند و بر این باور بودند که علم بهترین توضیح را برای وضع بشر دارد و آیندة درخشان انسان در بهرهگیری نظاممند از دستاوردهای آن، بهخصوص در مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی نهفته است.
یکی از شخصیّتهای برجستة سدة نوزدهم سن-سیمون و اصول وی بود که اثری قابل توجه بر رویدادها و افکار اروپائیان در طول این سده برجای گذاشت. حتی لویی ناپلئون بناپارت سوم هم پس از کودتا، عملاً در مسیری گام برداشت که سن-سیمون و پیروانش برای او هموار کرده بودند. وی آورندة گفتمان نواندیشیِ مسیحی بود؛ نوآوریهای فنی را به عنوان رهایندگانِ انسان از چنگال بردگی و خرافات و فقر و دردمندی میستود؛ اتحاد همة اروپائیان را برای دستیابی به آیندة درخشان ترویج میکرد؛ انرژیهای جنسی را محور اصلی نوآوریهای اجتماعی نوین میدانست و بهخصوص بر نقش زنان و جنبشهای زنانه در توسعة جوامع تأکید میکرد؛ در پی تأسیس کلیسای برابریطلبِ نو و آن مسیحیتی بود که عشق برادرانه را در قلب نظمِ اجتماعیِ کمالیافته بنشاند. روشنفکران چپ و صنعتگران و کارگران رادیکال در جریان رخدادهایی که به بهار انقلابیِ اروپای سدة نوزدهم (۱۸۴۸-۱۸۴۹) معروف شد، زبان و تصاویر کاتولیک عوامانه را علیه حکومتهای سلطنتی به کار میبردند و متفکران کلیدی آنها دست به کار جداسازی ”مسیحیت واقعی“ از ”مسیحیت بازاری“ شدند تا ایمان مسیحیت راستین را با استدلالهای رفرمیستی یا سوسیالیستی در هم آمیزند. وسوسه میشوم که علی شریعتی را یک نسخة سن-سیمونیِ صادراتی بنامم! او که از ابوذر یک کمونیست تمامعیار ساخت و اسلامِ علوی را جنبش تمامعیار زحمتکشان دانست. کمونیسم برای متفکرِ فرانسویِ رادیکال، اتین کابه چیزی جز ”مسیحیت در عمل“ نبود!
پس از سن-سیمونیها، چپهای رادیکال و لیبرالهای میانه و حتی مایل به چپ تا حدود زیادی با یکدیگر هممسیر شدند. هرچند در ادامه اوضاع و احوال چنان پیش رفت که با رادیکالیزهشدن هر چه بیشتر چپها، لیبرالها و محافظهکاران نزدیکی بیشتری با دربارهای سنتی یافتند و به جستجوی راههایی مؤثرتر برای مواجهه با مسئلة اجتماعی و ایجاد تغییرات واقعیتر برآمدند. از آن سو، صحنة اجتماعی برای چپهای رادیکال (و نه لیبرالهای چپ) که به دنبال تأسیس یک دولتِ مقتدرِ همهکاره و مسلّط بر جان و مال مردم بودند، نمایش و تئاتر بسیار مهم بود. آنها در میادین و خیابانها و قهوهخانهها، انرژی بسیاری را صرف بافتن و تافتن داستانها، نمایشنامهها، شعرها و رقصها و آوازها میکردند تا بلکه با این کار خویش به وقایع حال و هوایی حماسی ببخشند و آنها را به سمت جلو سوق دهند. ت��اترهای خیابانی به دانشجوهای رادیکال و بخشهایی از رادیکالهای طبقة متوسط شهری این امکان را میداد تا در لحظات سرشارتری از هیجانات جمعی زندگی کنند، سدها را بشکنند، خودِ خصوصی خویش را با یک هدفِ عمومی درهمآمیزند. این منظرة نمایشی و بداهه این ذهنیت را بوجود میآورد که گویی انسانِ انقلابی، به عنوان یگانه عاملیت تقدیر خویش، بهشکلی زنده در حال نگارش و ویرایش تاریخِ خویش است و خود و تاریخ را همزمان میسازد.
اروپای میانة سدة نوزدهم، بهویژه در سالهای منتهی به ۱۸۴۸ و پس از آن، به راستی بستر ظهور و بروز مدلهای اجتماعی-سیاسی اگر نه بیسابقه، دستکم کمسابقهای بود. ناسیونالیسم یکی از محصولات پر زرق و برق این بوتة جوشان و زایا بود. میهنپرستیِ ناسیونالیستی زمانی سر برآورد که فرهنگدانان و فرهنگگرایان الیت نقاط مختلف اروپا تصمیم گرفتند برنامههای فرهنگی خویش را با ابزارهای سیاسی به اجرا بگذارند. در این صحنه، هیچچیز به اندازة زبان کارآمد نبود. ولی مشکلی عمیق وجود داشت که به تناقضهایی بعضاً مضحک دامن میزد. هر چند ناسیونالیسم نورسته از احساسات عمیق میهنپرستان برای بازیابی یک شکوه کهنه و باستانی و تلاش برای احیاء و رستاخیز آن سرچشمه میگرفت، ولی بجز زبانِ مادری ابزار چندانی برای بروز و ظهور در چنته نداشت. سرزمینهای اروپایی بهشدت در هم گره خورده بودند و در عمل، امکان ناچیزی برای شکلگیری ناسیونالیسمهای سرزمینی وجود داشت و بزرگترین دشمن ناسیونالیستهای اروپایی گذشته و حال را ژئوپولتیک در بر میشود که تا مدتها برگ برندة محافظهکاران و وفاداران به نظم سنتی بود. اما شکلدادن به ناسیونالیسمهای زبانی هم در اروپای ساکن زیر خیمة میراث «امپراتوری مقدّس روم» ساده نبود. یک مشکل نغز آنجا بود که از مجارستان تا بلژیک، از پروسیه تا سیسیلی، بسیاری از میهنپرستان اساساً نمیتوانستند به زبان مادری خویش صحبت کنند و یا اینکه آن را بسیار کم میدانستند!! آنها در محافل خصوصیتر خویش عموماً به آلمانی یا حتی لاتین با هم ارتباط میگرفتند و بیشتر ناسیونالیستهای مجار فرانسوی یا آلمانی را هنگام به وجود آمدن کشمکشهای پیچیده، به راحتی جایگزین «زبان مادری» خود میساختند که در آن زمانها صرفاً به چند «فعل» و «واژة» محدود تقلیل مییافت!!! از طرفی هم، با آنکه حس وحدت ملّی به وجود آمده هوش از سر بخشی پر نفوذ از الیتهای میانهرو میبرد، فریبنده هم بود. بسیاری از دهقانانی که به راحتی زیر خیمة ملیگرایی جمع میشدند، به راحتی هم میتوانستند از آن فاصله بگیرند (اگر وقفهای هر چند موقت در منافع و خواستههایشان به وجود میآمد). در جایی مثل آلمان، که آن را یکی از مراکز بنیادین شکلگیری و گسترش ناسیونالیسم اروپایی میشناسیم، پروتستانها و کاتولیکها، جمهوریخواهان رادیکال و لیبرالهای میانهرو هرگز دید یکسانی نسبت به ناسیونالیسم و میهندوستی نداشتند.
فارغ از پاتریوتیزم ناسیونالیستی، میل به جمهوریخواهی، بهخصوص نزد لیبرالهای مایل به چپ و رادیکالهای دموکرات به شدت بالا بود. جمهوریخواهی در بافت اروپای سدة نوزدهم به خودی خود یک امر به غایت رادیکال محسوب میشد و بسیاری از فعالان و حامیان اصلیِ آن به ناگزیر به شکلی مخفیانه و در ’خاموشی‘ فعالیت میکردند. اساساً جمهوریخواهی بدون ”فراموشخانه“ و ”دسیسهچینی“ در آن بافت و سیاق چندان امکانپذیر نبود. جمهوریخواهان رادیکال انجمنهای مخفی و سلسلهمراتبی خودشان را راه میانداختند و زیر ستارة پنجگوشِ «ایشتار» و بیرقِ سرخ سوسیالیسمِ دموکرات خویش جمع میشدند و میکوشیدند تا با تأسیس یک جمهوریِ تمامیتگرا، جامعه را از همة مالکیت خصوصی پاک کنند. آنها دولتی میخواستند که به قول لودویکو بونارروتی، مثل یک مادر برای همة اعضای جامعة خود هزینة تحصیل، غذا و کار برابر را تأمین کند. آنها این مطالبه را خواست اصلی همة فیلسوفان جهان میدانستند و تنها راهِ بازسازی و بازگشت به «اورشلیم» به شمار میآوردند! همین فراموشخانهها بودند که در شرق مدیترانه جمهوری «ترکان جوان» را ساختند تا همچون موریانه پایههای پوسیدة امپراتوریِ کهنة عثمانی را تا آخرین قطعه ببلعد و در دهة ۱۹۲۰، ایران را در آستانة تبدیلشدن به یک جمهوری پیش کشیدند.
میگویند یک سرزمین، انگلستان، هرگز طعم آشوبها و جنبشهای بهار انقلابی اروپایی را نچشید. حتی میهندوستان انگلیسی همین را نه تنها وجه تمایز و برتری خود نسبت به اروپای قارهای، بلکه دستاویزی برای گسستن از پادشاهیهای متحد بریتانیا میکنند تا یکبار دیگر انگلستان را به آن شکوه و یگانگی مثالین خویش بازگردانند! البته اوضاع به این سادگیها هم نیست. بهار انقلابی در انگلستان هم اتفاق افتاد، اما نه در سرزمین اصلی و متروپولیس آن؛ بلکه در حاشیههای استعماری. فشارهای مالیاتی به موقع از روی شانههای مردم متروپولیس برداشته شد و روی زمینداران، کارگران، مزدبگیران و بردگان حاشیههای استعماری سنگینی کرد و از اتفاق، در آنجا آشوبهای دردناکی را هم موجب شد. الگوی بهتر مواجهه با بهار انقلابی را پادشاهی هلند در اختیار میگذارد. پادشاه هلند با رصدکردن اوضاع و احوال سرزمینهای دیگر، ��هویژه فرانسه و ایتالیا و اتریش، بهشکلی هوشمندانه برنامههای اصلاحاتی همهجانبهای را برای مواجههای معقول با مسئلة اجتماعی طرحریزی کرده و به اجرا میگذارد. دست هلند برای این کار بسیار باز بود و از نیروهای مشاوره و برنامة خبرهای برخوردار بود و البته نظام پادشاهیِ مردمداری هم داشت. هر چه باشد، همة ما میدانیم که هلند منشأ و خاستگاه اصلی رنسانس عقلانی-حقوقی اروپا بود و نخستین جایی که در آن حوزههای خصوصی و عمومی، بسیار پیش از نقاط دیگر اروپا (به استثناء بریتانیا) بر مبنای نوزایی قانون طبیعی رومی از یکدیگر تفکیک شدند. هلند از عطر شکوفههای بهاری ۱۸۴۸ بسیار لذّت میبرد زمانی که بیشتر جاهای دیگر اروپا غرق در کشمکش و درگیری و خونریزی بودند!
نکتة مهم در مورد بهار انقلابی، «اروپاییبودن» و «تراملیّت» نهفته در آن بود. جالب است که انواع ایدههای بیسابقه و کمسابقه، از لیبرالیسم گرفته تا سوسیالیسم، دموکراسی رادیکال، رادیکالیسم برابریطلب، سوسیال دموکراسی و ناسیونالیسم، هر کدام در نقاط متفاوتی از این قاره دست بالا را میان فعالان مدنی و سیاسی به خود گرفتند، اما چند عنصر بنیادین در همة آنها مشترک بود و به کل جریانات سدة نوزدهم خصلتی «تراملّی» و به معنای واقعی کلمه «اروپایی» میبخشید. این مشترکات در همهجا قابل توجه بود: مطالبة قانون اساسی، آزادیهای انسانی و مدنی، آزادی مطبوعات، آزادی انجمنها و اجتماعات، حق برخورداری «ملتها» از «سپاه ملّی»، اصلاح حق رأی. این عناصر عمومی لیبرال اروپای سدة نوزدهم را میتوان حاصل چندین دهه گفتگوها و مجادلههای استثنایی ”تراملّی“ به شمار آورد.
رادیکالها سهم چندانی از بهار انقلابی اروپایی نبردند؛ فقط توانستند جوامع آرمانی خود را با کمی تأخیر، در طول سدة بیستم به سرزمینهای شرقی اوراسیا و امریکای جنوبی و مرکزی صادر کنند و مردم آن سرزمینها را به خاک سیاه بنشانند!! آنچه در عمل در بسامد بهار انقلابی ار��پا اتفاق افتاد، شکلگیری دولتهای موقّت بسیار معتدل، حتی با مشارکت جدّی محافظهکاران و سنتگرایان میانهروتر بود که اتفاقاً به شکلگیری برنامههای اجتماعی بسیار موفقیتآمیزی انجامید. رادیکالهایی مثل مارکس و انگلس از این مینالیدند که مردمان رنجکشیده هنوز به آگاهی طبقاتی مطلوب خود دست نیافتهاند و نسبت به شرایط خویش در «عقبماندگی» به سر میبرند. در عین حال، لیبرالها نیز هر چه بیشتر از شدّتیابی رادیکالیسم چپ به وحشت افتاده و میترسیدند، بیشتر به سمت نیروهای نظم اجتماعی گرایش مییافتند. لیبرالها هر جا که دولت را در اختیار میگرفتند، باشگا��های سیاسی دموکراتیک، مجامع عمومی و تظاهرات را همواره تحت نظارت پلیس و اقدامات امنیتی پیشگیرانه قرار میدادند و همزمان، چشم به روی همة هجمههایی که محافظهکاران سنتگرا به مشروعیت انقلاب روا میداشتند میبستند تا از رادیکالیزهشدن فضا پرهیز کنند. محافظهکاران و لیبرالهای راستگرا هم رفتهرفته از جنبههای مختلف اجتماعی «انقلابزدایی» کرده و برنامههای ضدانقلابی را با فراغ بال بیشتری پیش میبردند. در داخل مجامع انقلابی، لیبرالها به شکلی فزاینده تمایل یافتند تا همراه و متهد با دشمنان محافظهکار سابق خویش، علیه چپهای رادیکال و حتی میانهرو موضع بگیرند.
این وضعیت را ذکر مثالی از رخدادهای چند سال اخیر ایران به خوبی روشن میکند. تابستان سال ۱۴۰۱ شاهد خیزش جنبشی بود که به «جنبش مهسا» معروف شد و با مشارکت بیسابقة دیاسپورای ایرانیان خارج از کشور، فراگیری و گسترش جهانی بیسابقهای یافت. عناصر اصلی جنبش مهسا با شعار ’زن، زندگی، آزادی‘، عملاً عناصری رادیکال بودند و بروز آنها در کوچه و خیابان توسط نسل «زِد»، از بوسههای همجنسگرایانه گرفته تا نمایش جنسیِ بدنِ زن در حالات مختلف، عملاً رادیکالترین نیروها را دور خود جمع کرد؛ از رادیکالیسم جنسی گرفته (که به روشنی روی استیج برلین رونمایی شد!) تا رادیکالیسم هویتی و انواع جریانهای «اینترسکشنال» اجتماعی دیگر. و به چشم دیدیم که چطور مطالبات این جنبش رادیکالیستی هر چه بیشتر و بیشتر خواستهها و مطالبات الیتِ روشنفکر با محوریت ایرانیان دانشگاهنشین خارج از کشور را منعکس میکرد و پیش میکشید، لیبرالهای میانهرو (هم چپ و هم البته بیشتر راست) داخلی (شاید بتوان بخشی از تحولخواهان و اصلاحطلبان را در این دسته جای داد)، با سرعتی بیشتر خودشان را کنار کشیدند و به بازگشت محافظهکارانة نظم در جامعه روی خوشتری نشان دادند.
از آن طرف، آن بدنة فرودست که اساساً دغدغههای الیت اجتماعی و رادیکال برج عاجنشین را ندارد و در دی ۹۶ و آبان ۹۸ برای ”یک لقمه نان“ دست به شورشهای کور زد، همراه با رادیکالتر شدن «زن، زندگی، آزادی» که عملاً در سیطرة کنسرتهای پرزرقوبرق و شو-آفهای قشرِ بورژوای الیت غربنشین درآمده بود، فاصلهاش با آن جنبش بیشتر و بیشتر شد و خود را با جریانهای لیبرالِ میانهرو (مایل به راست) و ملیگراتر و رهبران آن هر لحظه نزدیکتر و همدلتر احساس کرد و دید. درست همین اتفاق در اروپای سدة نوزدهم و در جریانهای ’ضد انقلاب‘، چنان کارل مارکس را برآشفت که این قشر دردکشیده را ”عقبمانده“هایی خواند که علاقهای به تغییر شرایط خویش ندارند و آنها را از اینکه به جریانهای محافظهکار و لیبرالهای میانهرو و عموماً ناسیونالیست رأی داده و دلبستهاند و به قدر کافی ’آگاهی طبقاتی‘ نیافتهاند، شماتت و سرزنش کرد. مشکل بزرگ مارکس که در لابهلای خطوط این کتاب به خوبی نمایان میشود، علاوهبر درک معیوب و منحرف او از تاریخ فرهنگ انسان، این هم بود که یک مدل ذهنی دلبخواهی را پرورش داده بود و به هر نحو ممکن میخواست تا آن را بر واقعیتهای بیرونی تحمیل کند؛ به عبارتی ماتریالیسم او از ایدآلیسم هگلی به مراتب ایدهآلگراتر بود!! این دقیقاً همان مشکلی است که رادیکالهای امروز، خواه در ایران یا در غرب بدان دچار هستند و متأثر از آن همواره ناکام ماندهاند.
در جریان بهار انقلابی ۱۸۴۸ و دولتهای موقت پس از آن هم شاهدیم که مسئلة دهقانان و رعایا برای رادیکالها و لیبرالهای عمدتاً شهرنشین برآمده از بستر صنعتی بورژوا (مثل شخص مارکس و انگلس) امری ناشناخته بود، درحالیکه محافظهکاران، لیبرالهای دست راستی (عمدتاً زمینداران و ملّاکان) و درباریان این قشر را خوب میشناختند و میتوانستند به موقع با وعدههای مؤثرتر و عملیتر، آراء و قلوب آنها را به سوی خویش سرازیر کنند. واقعیت این بود که طبقات فرودست دهقانی-کارگر عملاً یک معمای ناشناختنی برای الیتهای «جهانوطنی» باهوش بودند و هنوز هم هستند. رشد راستگراییهای عموماً ناسیونالیست با مشارکت همین طبقات فرودست که امروز در جایجای اروپا، امریکای جنوبی و مرکزی و دیگر نقاط جهان، حتی «سرزمینِ تکشاخهای کانادا»، شاهد آنیم، هرگز اتفاقی نیست. اتفاقاً، خلاف باور معوج مارکس و انگلس، طبقات فرودست از جایگاه خودشان آگاهی کامل دارند و بنابر هوش زیستی، خوب میدانند چه کسانی و کدام جریانها منافع آنها را بیشتر و بهتر تأمین کرده و خواهند کرد!
برنامة توسعه در تقابل با ایدئولوژی رادیکال (مثال لوئی ناپلئون بناپارت سوم)؛ یکی از ثمرات جدّی و شایان توجّه پسا بهارِ انقلابیِ اروپا، شکلگیری و ظهور دولتهای راستگرایی بود که کمترین شباهت را به دولتهای محافظهکار پیش از بهار اروپایی نداشتند. بهار انقلابی هر چند به زهرِ تلخ رادیکالها تبدیل شد، مردمانِ تشنة لیبرالیسم و بهبود شرایط اقتصادی و اجتماعی را عمیقاً به آینده امیدوار کرد. دولتهای جدید یکی پس از دیگری با مشارکت و آمیزش راستها و چپهای میانهرو تشکیل کابینه دادند. در فرانسة ۱۸۵۲، لویی ناپلئون بناپارت سوم، برادرزادة ناپلئونِ بزرگ که با کمک بریتانیا از لندن بازگشته بود، با کودتا حکومت فرانسه را در دست گرفت و هر سال نزد فرانسویان جایگاه محترمی یافت. او یک شخصیت اوتوکرات و محافظهکار داشت و دولتی دست راستی را هم تأسیس کرد، ولی آرمانهای سن-سیمون و هواداران او را به راحتی میشد در برنامههای توسعهای او مشاهده کرد. راهسازی، توسعة کارخانجات، بهبود شرایط بهداشتی شهرها، گسترش خدمات عمومی تنها بخشهایی از دولت توسعهگرای ناپلئون سوم بود. چنین بود که خلاف میل و خواست رادیکالهایی نظیر نیچه که در میانهروهای لیبرال، آدمهای میانمایه و بیخاصیت میدیدند، در طول نیمة دوم سدة نوزدهم مسئلة اجتماعی از حالت آرمانگرایانه به برنامهای اداری-اجرایی دگردیسی یافت و رشد و توسعة سرزمینهای اروپای غربی و مرکزی را تا آستانة جنگ جهانی نخست به همراه آورد.
December 17, 2023
Clark sets up the revolution with talk of the capitalist industrial economy which accelerated profit and created poverty at the same breakneck speed, places like Ireland, “whose population grew at between two and three times the rates prevailing in north-western Europe, producing a population density in rural districts that was unrivaled across the continent.” Around 1.1 million perished out of a then population of 8.3 million of famine and related disease and to think this all took place on the shores of the greatest empire
This period reminds you of the perennial potency of nostalgia, that one-stop fix all pseudo sanctuary offered up to the masses by contrived ideas of a fictitious shared past, a seductive glorious history where everything was better. And of course the further from the roots of these origin myths, the stronger the pull of them becomes.
The constant production and the evolution of myths, like ethnic purity promoted to aspirational status, but of course myths just like tradition are 100% man made and we should forever be on our watch when people go to extreme lengths to propagate and promote them, without ever questioning their legitimacy.
Some of the most notable things to emerge from this period of history, is how so many things broadly remain the same, the ruling classes go to extraordinary lengths to hold onto power and rarely give anything meaningful back without a fight. They have successfully created and perpetuated a system which serves to protect and strengthen their personal circumstances above everyone else, laws are made for them by them, suppressing the rights of workers, wages continue to be kept artificially low in order to allow profits to grow increasingly higher, always at the expense of those who create most of it. Meanwhile the left remains notoriously fractured and divided, prone to petty infighting and consistently struggles to work together to present a cohesive, united front to attain clear, useful goals which often makes the work of the ruling classes all the easier.
The shelves of bookstores and libraries around the world are bursting with tomes from countless, privileged academics from elite universities, but this isn’t automatically a good thing. A fine academic doesn’t necessarily translate to a fine writer, and there are countless books out there to show this. Clark’s style is painfully dry and this was crying out for some life to breathed into it, something to break the flat monotony of his delivery. His research and knowledge is evidently of a high standard, but he doesn’t appear to have the qualities to bring all of that knowledge together and make it enjoyable to read for a wide audience. More often than not this made for absolutely punishing reading, the kind that puts off countless people from reading history books, because they mistakenly believe that they are all as drab and impenetrable as this.
Something not covered in here is the impact of later events which would have global repercussions like the two biggest tragedies to impact the 20th century in two World Wars, but the difference was after these wars, power had to concede something to the masses who endured so much trauma, suffering and death, such as the case of the UK where Attlee’s Post-War Labour government introduced the likes of the welfare state and the NHS and nationalised certain industries, both as a thank you and a compensation to the masses.
Whereas when we compare that to the 21st century, and look at the two major global catastrophes - the financial crisis caused by the greed and incompetence of the finance industry and the global pandemic. These were both opportunities for deep self-reflection and wider examination and closer scrutiny of the systems we live under and yet both times all that happened was that the rich and powerful used both disasters to exploit other’s needs, weakness and vulnerabilities, taking more from the commons and they grew even more rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
This period reminds you of the perennial potency of nostalgia, that one-stop fix all pseudo sanctuary offered up to the masses by contrived ideas of a fictitious shared past, a seductive glorious history where everything was better. And of course the further from the roots of these origin myths, the stronger the pull of them becomes.
The constant production and the evolution of myths, like ethnic purity promoted to aspirational status, but of course myths just like tradition are 100% man made and we should forever be on our watch when people go to extreme lengths to propagate and promote them, without ever questioning their legitimacy.
Some of the most notable things to emerge from this period of history, is how so many things broadly remain the same, the ruling classes go to extraordinary lengths to hold onto power and rarely give anything meaningful back without a fight. They have successfully created and perpetuated a system which serves to protect and strengthen their personal circumstances above everyone else, laws are made for them by them, suppressing the rights of workers, wages continue to be kept artificially low in order to allow profits to grow increasingly higher, always at the expense of those who create most of it. Meanwhile the left remains notoriously fractured and divided, prone to petty infighting and consistently struggles to work together to present a cohesive, united front to attain clear, useful goals which often makes the work of the ruling classes all the easier.
The shelves of bookstores and libraries around the world are bursting with tomes from countless, privileged academics from elite universities, but this isn’t automatically a good thing. A fine academic doesn’t necessarily translate to a fine writer, and there are countless books out there to show this. Clark’s style is painfully dry and this was crying out for some life to breathed into it, something to break the flat monotony of his delivery. His research and knowledge is evidently of a high standard, but he doesn’t appear to have the qualities to bring all of that knowledge together and make it enjoyable to read for a wide audience. More often than not this made for absolutely punishing reading, the kind that puts off countless people from reading history books, because they mistakenly believe that they are all as drab and impenetrable as this.
Something not covered in here is the impact of later events which would have global repercussions like the two biggest tragedies to impact the 20th century in two World Wars, but the difference was after these wars, power had to concede something to the masses who endured so much trauma, suffering and death, such as the case of the UK where Attlee’s Post-War Labour government introduced the likes of the welfare state and the NHS and nationalised certain industries, both as a thank you and a compensation to the masses.
Whereas when we compare that to the 21st century, and look at the two major global catastrophes - the financial crisis caused by the greed and incompetence of the finance industry and the global pandemic. These were both opportunities for deep self-reflection and wider examination and closer scrutiny of the systems we live under and yet both times all that happened was that the rich and powerful used both disasters to exploit other’s needs, weakness and vulnerabilities, taking more from the commons and they grew even more rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else.
December 19, 2023
Excellent book. I never learned anything about the 19th Century, much less in Europe. This comprehensive study of the 1848 revolutions has done enormously to help me understand this crucial moment of our not-so-distant history.
January 6, 2024
Great analysis of the 1848 revolutions across Europe. Very well written. His main point is that the traditional view of the 1848 revolutions - that they were very complicated and they failed - is wrong. They were complicated but they did not fail. They did not overthrow governments everywhere and even when they overthrew a government and installed their own it didn't usually last very long. But they changed Europe forever. Their liberal democratic ideas permeated society slowly but surely. Conservative governments got a fright and undertook reform in order to forestall repeats of the 1848 revolutions.
October 1, 2023
This is 5 stars for those who are looking for a (not "the") definitive history of the revolutionary period in Europe about 1848. For those who are looking for a more general history, I think this would be more of a 3 star rating.
Clark's strength is in surveying all of Europe, and a bit of the colonial overseas territories (e.g., Guadeloupe and Martinique), providing a synthesis of a huge number of broadly parallel yet distinct movements in many countries. This is also the weakness that I referred to for the 3-star reader - it's immensely complicated to follow the hundreds of individuals involved in dozens of locations over a period of a couple of years.
I think that it will be hard to top this analysis. I am sure someone will someday in the future but for now this is probably as good as a person is going to get for a one-volume history of the period.
The parallels with today's restlessness in public discourse is interesting but I think that it might be a bit of stretch to consider that we are in a similar situation globally. In various regions, though, I think he is right in forecasting some similar situations.
As a side-note, the last photo in the book is of the "Freedom Convoy" in my hometown of Ottawa in 2022, which I witnessed personally. I never felt that there was any revolutionary potential in that demonstration, just a lot of yahooery and blowing off of steam.
Clark's strength is in surveying all of Europe, and a bit of the colonial overseas territories (e.g., Guadeloupe and Martinique), providing a synthesis of a huge number of broadly parallel yet distinct movements in many countries. This is also the weakness that I referred to for the 3-star reader - it's immensely complicated to follow the hundreds of individuals involved in dozens of locations over a period of a couple of years.
I think that it will be hard to top this analysis. I am sure someone will someday in the future but for now this is probably as good as a person is going to get for a one-volume history of the period.
The parallels with today's restlessness in public discourse is interesting but I think that it might be a bit of stretch to consider that we are in a similar situation globally. In various regions, though, I think he is right in forecasting some similar situations.
As a side-note, the last photo in the book is of the "Freedom Convoy" in my hometown of Ottawa in 2022, which I witnessed personally. I never felt that there was any revolutionary potential in that demonstration, just a lot of yahooery and blowing off of steam.
December 27, 2023
Christopher Clark manages to knit a thick, colorful and socially critical tapestry of the events around 1848 that is entertaining to read and highly illuminating also for our time. I only realized at the end that Christopher Clark also read the entire book with such eloquence and feeling for the different languages that all the names of actors, towns and countries are perfectly intoned. Even Swiss Niederurnen is pronounced with a Swiss German accent!!!🙏🙏🙏
December 13, 2023
الربيع الثوري ، وهو التاريخ الجديد الرائع للثورات الأوروبية الذي يكتبه كريستوفر كلارك حيث يسعى إلى إعادة ضبط فهمنا لأحداث عام 1848. يرفض كلارك، أستاذ التاريخ في جامعة ريجيوس بجامعة كامبريدج، إجماع المؤرخين على فشل الثورات الأوروبية، بحجة أنَّ الحديث عن "النجاح" "و"الفشل" هو تفويت لتأثير اللحظة التاريخية. ويصر على أنه لا يمكننا الحكم على الثورات إلا من خلال تأثيرها، ومن وجهة نظره، فإن إرث عام 1848 كان هائلًا.
يبدأ كلارك بوصف الخلفية المادية للثورة بتفصيل كبير، و"الهشاشة الاقتصادية" لأعداد كبيرة من الأوروبيين، الذين اجتاحهم الجوع والطاعون، وجشع وانعدام أخلاق أصحاب العمل، وملاك الأراضي، والحكام. ومع ذلك، لم تكن الثورة مجرد نتاج السخط على مثل هذه الظروف الاجتماعية وربما هذا يفيدنا في التشكيك في حتمية الثورات مع الانهيارات الاقتصادية. إنَّ جغرافية الجوع -على حد تعبير كلارك-لا تتوافق مع "جغرافية الثورة". وكانت المخاوف السياسية، أكثر من كونها اقتصادية أو اجتماعية، هي التي قادت إلى الثورة.
يقوم كلارك بعمل رائع في نسج الخيوط التي لا تعد ولا تحصى والتي تشكل السرد؛ مما يسمح لنا برؤية الأحداث بتفاصيل دقيقة وبرؤية شاملة على مستوى أوروبا. وفي حين أنَّ الثورات في بلدان مختلفة تبعت بعضها البعض بسرعة، لم يكن الأمر أن تكون إحداها شرارة للأخرى. بل إنَّ كل الثورات نتجت عن مجموعة مشتركة من الظروف الاجتماعية والسياسية التي امتدت عبر القارة، والتي كانت متجذرة في نفس الفضاء الاقتصادي المترابط، وتتكشف داخل الأنظمة الثقافية والسياسية المشابهة.
كانت الثورات في البداية ناجحة بشكل لافت للنظر، حيث جلبت في أعقابها برلمانات جديدة وحريات جديدة ودساتير جديدة، لكن في غضون عام، بدأ النظام القديم في إعادة تأكيد نفسه، بشراسة كبيرة في كثير من الأحيان، وتم التراجع عن العديد من الحريات السياسية والاجتماعية المكتسبة حديثًا. وهذه أهمية دراسة تاريخ الثورات، معرفة كيف يمكن حمايتها بتجنُّب إخفاقاتها التاريخية، ربما دراسة الربيع الأوروبي كانت يمكن أن تحمي الربيع العربي من الثورة المضادة. كتب كلارك أنَّ المغزى من القصة هو أنَّ الثوريين لم يتمكنوا من بناء تضامن دولي قوي بما فيه الكفاية يمكنه الصمود في وجه "التهديد الذي يشكله المجتمع الدولي المضاد للثورة".
ربما يكون الخيط الأكثر أهمية الذي يمر عبر الربيع الثوري هو العلاقة المشحونة، والصراع المفتوح في كثير من الأحيان، بين الليبراليين والراديكاليين. كانت هذه فترة لا يزال فيها معاني الليبرالية والراديكالية في طور التشكيل، وقد لعب عام 1848 دورًا مهمًا في المساعدة على تحديد الاثنين. كان الليبراليون في الأساس من الكتاب والمفكرين والسياسيين البرجوازيين الذين اعتبروا أنفسهم محاصرين بين الثورة والاستبداد، وأرادوا إيجاد طريق وسط بين الامتيازات والتسلسلات الهرمية للنظام الحاكم التقليدي وما اعتبروه استبدادية وتطرفًا اجتماعيًا.
الليبراليون أكدوا على امتياز الثروة، وطالبوا "بالمساواة السياسية دون الإصرار على المساواة الاجتماعية"، وأكدوا "مبدأ السيادة الشعبية" بينما "قيدوا تلك السيادة، خشية تعريض الحرية للخطر. ولم يكونوا ديمقراطيين، لأنه على الرغم من أنهم "يطمحون إلى التحدث باسم الشعب"، فإن ما كانوا يقصدونه حقًا بكلمة "الشعب" هو "نسبة صغيرة من دافعي الضرائب الذكور المتعلمين". لقد كانوا، في أحسن الأحوال، "ثوريين مترددين" كما يقول كلارك.
كان الليبراليون أكثر تركيزًا على مسائل الحرية السياسية، مثل مدى حق الانتخاب وحرية الصحافة ومساواة المرأة وإلغاء العبودية وتحرير اليهود. كما أنَّ الراديكاليون، من خلال وضع المسألة الاجتماعية في صدارة النقاش، غالبًا ما ذهبوا إلى أبعد بكثير مما كان الليبراليون على استعداد للقيام به في القضايا السياسية، حيث طالب العديد منهم بالاقتراع العام، وحرية صحافة، وأشكال أكثر شمولاً من الديمقراطية. كما ذهبوا إلى أبعد من ذلك بكثير في استعدادهم لاستخدام القوة والعنف لتغيير المشهد السياسي، كلارك هنا يتعاطف مع الليبراليين أكثر من الراديكاليين.
وكالعادة جاءت الثورات المضادة، فقدت الثورات قوتها وتم تمزيق الدساتير. وفي فرنسا كان أداء المتطرفين سيئًا في انتخابات الجمعية الوطنية، وفي أوروبا الوسطى استعادت عائلة هابسبورج - التي اضطرت إلى الفرار من فيينا إلى إنسبروك ( مدينة في النمسا) في مايو - اليد العليا حيث استعادت براغ ( عاصمة التشيك) وأجزاء من شمال إيطاليا.
وأخيرًا أسدل التدخل الأجنبي الستار على الربيع الثوري. وفي عام 1849، اجتاح الجنود الروس لقمع الثورة المجرية نيابة عن النمسا بعد أن جثا الإمبراطور [فرانز جوزيف] على ركبتيه أمام القيصر نيكولاس الأول في وارسو، متوسلاً إليه إنقاذ "المجتمع الحديث من الخراب المؤكد"، شيء أشبه بتوسل دول الخليج ( الإمارات والسعودية) للأمريكان للقضاء على الربيع العربي لاسيما في مصر كما جاء في مذكرات القادة الأمريكان. ففي إبريل/نيسان من نفس العام أرسلت فرنسا- في انتهاك لدستورها- عشرة آلاف رجل لسحق الجمهورية الرومانية التي لم تدم طويلًا لصالح البابا بيوس التاسع، بدعم من رجل الدولة الليبرالي ألكسيس دي توكفيل.
ويصر كلارك على أنَّ الثورات لم تفشل، ومن وجهة نظره، فقد شجعوا الولايات من البرتغال إلى بروسيا على أن تصبح أكثر نشاطًا، وتوجيه الاستثمارات إلى السكك الحديدية والتلغراف، وإنشاء مكاتب إحصائية ووزارات لتعزيز التنمية الاقتصادية والصحة العامة. ومع ذلك إنَّ الشعور بالفشل الذي يحوم حول عام 1848 لا يمكن تبديده من خلال حساب خطوط السكك الحديدية التي وضعت في أعقاب ذلك. جاءت الثورة المضادة من قلب الانقسام حيث يقول كلارك أنه لم يتمكن الراديكاليون ولا الليبراليون (مع بعض الاستثناءات ) من فهم المشاكل المستعصية التي يواجهها المجتمع الريفي، وهي الفئة التي تشمل الغالبية العظمى من الأوروبيين. لقد كان هذا إغفالًا صارخًا، وسيدفعون ثمنه غاليًا بتعبير كلارك.
كانت ثورات مذهلة حيث لعدة أشهر اهتزت الممالك في جميع أنحاء القارة عندما طالب الثوار بوضع دساتير تكرس الحقوق السياسية الأساسية وتكب�� جماح السلطة الملكية. يوضح كلارك: "لم تكن هناك قضية واحدة، بل كان هناك عدد كبير من الأسئلة - حول الديمقراطية، والتمثيل، والمساواة الاجتماعية، وتنظيم العمل، والعلاقات بين الجنسين، والدين، وأشكال سلطة الدولة". يعرض كلارك الاضطرابات على مستوى الشارع من خلال روايات شهود العيان، وينسج هذه المادة في لوحة رائعة عابرة للقارات. ومع تراجع النظام الإقطاعي، ظهرت أشكال سياسية جديدة. كتب كارل ماركس، الشخصية التي تطفو في كتاب كلارك كمراقب "البيان الشيوعي" مع فريدريك إنجلز في أوائل عام 1848. وانتشر القتال عبر الحدود في الوقت الذي كانت فيه الدول القومية الجديدة تكافح من أجل الظهور. يكتب كلارك: "كانت هذه هي الثورة الأوروبية الحقيقية الوحيدة التي حدثت على الإطلاق".
ومن وجهة نظر كلارك، كانت الصحافة هي الوسيلة التي قادت هذه الشرارة في جميع أنحاء أوروبا؛ مما سمح لسكان المدن الذين قرأوا - أو سمعوا - الأخبار بفهم الأحداث باعتبارها مترابطة. قصص من باريس جلبت المتظاهرين إلى الشوارع في برلين. تسببت كلمة سقوط المستشار مترنيخ في فيينا في تذبذب المحكمة البروسية. الإرساليات عبرت المحيطات. في المارتينيك ( جزيرة في شرق البحر الكاريبي) وغوادلوب ( منطقة فرنسية ضمن جزر ليوارد)، تلقت تمردات العبيد هزة إضافية من التقارير التي تفيد بانهيار النظام الملكي في فرنسا، إنها بلاشك روح يناير ٢٠١١ والربيع العربي تحوم حولك وأنت تقرأ عن تلك الأحداث.. أحداث كيف ثاروا، وكيف تشكَّلت الثورة المضادة ضدهم .
هناك نقاط تشابه بين الربيعين، الأوروبي والعربي، منها الطبيعة العفوية التي فاجأت الشرطة والجيش في أواخر الشتاء، والاختلاف بين الثوار أنفسهم على شكل النظام الجديد، هل كرر ثوار الربيع العربي أخطاء ثوار الربيع الأوروبي؟! ربما حتى ولو لم تكن السياقات متطابقة تمامًا، لكن الوعي والخبرات بتجارب الأمم والتراكم كلها أمور غابت عن ثوار يناير، وبطبيعة الحال كانت جديدة على ثوار الربيع الأوروبي، مثلًا يخلص كلارك إلى أنَّ إحدى مفاجآت عام 1848 هي أنَّ القوى المحافظة المناهضة للثورة أثبتت أنها أكثر قسوة ومرونة من الثوار. تمكَّنت الأنظمة الملكية المحاصرة من الحفاظ على دعم المجتمع الريفي، وخاصة الفلاحين، الذين كانوا لا يزالون يشكلون معظم السكان في كل بلد في أوروبا في منتصف القرن التاسع عشر .
يجمع كلارك بين التحليل الشامل والتفسير ومهارة المراسل على مستوى الأرض في سرد الأحداث والتقاط الشخصية بالحيوية والرحمة. الكتاب مليء بأوصاف غير عادية للحواجز التي أقيمت في شوارع باريس وبرلين وفيينا، وللمعارك الفوضوية والدموية بين العمال والبرجوازيين وقوى النظام، وطوال السرد مليء بشخصيات حية، مثل روبرت بلوم ابن الحائك الفقير، مدير المسرح، الذي تم انتخابه لبرلمان فرانكفورت، ينضم إلى الثورة في شوارع فيينا ويتم إعدامه عندما استعادت قوات النظام الملكي السيطرة على المدينة.
تظهر العديد من الشخصيات مرارًا وتكرارًا في جميع أنحاء أوروبا مع تطور الثورة. حارب لودفيج ميروسلافسكي في الانتفاضة البولندية عام 1830، وشارك في الانتفاضة الفاشلة في غاليسيا فقط ليظهر في النضال في باليرمو، ثم في بادن. كما حارب "جوزيف بيم" في بولندا عام 1830، وخدم في المتاريس في فيينا عام 1848، وقاتل إلى الجانب المجري ضد الروس عام 1849، وانتهى به الأمر، بشكل لا يصدق، بعد هزيمة الثورة، حاكمًا لحلب العثمانية. السرد مليء بشخصيات نسائية مفعمة بالحيوية والأهمية، مثل الكاتبة الأمريكية مارغريت فولر، التي اعتنت بالجرحى عندما هاجم الجيش الفرنسي الجمهورية الرومانية التي لم تدم طويلاً في عام 1849.
كتاب على كل حال جدير بالقراءة، لمعرفة كيف يتشكل وعي الأمم، وكيف ناضلوا من أجل حقوقهم، ومعرفة كيف نجحوا وكيف أخفقوا، كلها أمور مهمة في تراث الأمم؛ لأنه واقعيًا تت��رر الإخفاقات بشكل كبير بس تكرار نفس الأخطاء.
يبدأ كلارك بوصف الخلفية المادية للثورة بتفصيل كبير، و"الهشاشة الاقتصادية" لأعداد كبيرة من الأوروبيين، الذين اجتاحهم الجوع والطاعون، وجشع وانعدام أخلاق أصحاب العمل، وملاك الأراضي، والحكام. ومع ذلك، لم تكن الثورة مجرد نتاج السخط على مثل هذه الظروف الاجتماعية وربما هذا يفيدنا في التشكيك في حتمية الثورات مع الانهيارات الاقتصادية. إنَّ جغرافية الجوع -على حد تعبير كلارك-لا تتوافق مع "جغرافية الثورة". وكانت المخاوف السياسية، أكثر من كونها اقتصادية أو اجتماعية، هي التي قادت إلى الثورة.
يقوم كلارك بعمل رائع في نسج الخيوط التي لا تعد ولا تحصى والتي تشكل السرد؛ مما يسمح لنا برؤية الأحداث بتفاصيل دقيقة وبرؤية شاملة على مستوى أوروبا. وفي حين أنَّ الثورات في بلدان مختلفة تبعت بعضها البعض بسرعة، لم يكن الأمر أن تكون إحداها شرارة للأخرى. بل إنَّ كل الثورات نتجت عن مجموعة مشتركة من الظروف الاجتماعية والسياسية التي امتدت عبر القارة، والتي كانت متجذرة في نفس الفضاء الاقتصادي المترابط، وتتكشف داخل الأنظمة الثقافية والسياسية المشابهة.
كانت الثورات في البداية ناجحة بشكل لافت للنظر، حيث جلبت في أعقابها برلمانات جديدة وحريات جديدة ودساتير جديدة، لكن في غضون عام، بدأ النظام القديم في إعادة تأكيد نفسه، بشراسة كبيرة في كثير من الأحيان، وتم التراجع عن العديد من الحريات السياسية والاجتماعية المكتسبة حديثًا. وهذه أهمية دراسة تاريخ الثورات، معرفة كيف يمكن حمايتها بتجنُّب إخفاقاتها التاريخية، ربما دراسة الربيع الأوروبي كانت يمكن أن تحمي الربيع العربي من الثورة المضادة. كتب كلارك أنَّ المغزى من القصة هو أنَّ الثوريين لم يتمكنوا من بناء تضامن دولي قوي بما فيه الكفاية يمكنه الصمود في وجه "التهديد الذي يشكله المجتمع الدولي المضاد للثورة".
ربما يكون الخيط الأكثر أهمية الذي يمر عبر الربيع الثوري هو العلاقة المشحونة، والصراع المفتوح في كثير من الأحيان، بين الليبراليين والراديكاليين. كانت هذه فترة لا يزال فيها معاني الليبرالية والراديكالية في طور التشكيل، وقد لعب عام 1848 دورًا مهمًا في المساعدة على تحديد الاثنين. كان الليبراليون في الأساس من الكتاب والمفكرين والسياسيين البرجوازيين الذين اعتبروا أنفسهم محاصرين بين الثورة والاستبداد، وأرادوا إيجاد طريق وسط بين الامتيازات والتسلسلات الهرمية للنظام الحاكم التقليدي وما اعتبروه استبدادية وتطرفًا اجتماعيًا.
الليبراليون أكدوا على امتياز الثروة، وطالبوا "بالمساواة السياسية دون الإصرار على المساواة الاجتماعية"، وأكدوا "مبدأ السيادة الشعبية" بينما "قيدوا تلك السيادة، خشية تعريض الحرية للخطر. ولم يكونوا ديمقراطيين، لأنه على الرغم من أنهم "يطمحون إلى التحدث باسم الشعب"، فإن ما كانوا يقصدونه حقًا بكلمة "الشعب" هو "نسبة صغيرة من دافعي الضرائب الذكور المتعلمين". لقد كانوا، في أحسن الأحوال، "ثوريين مترددين" كما يقول كلارك.
كان الليبراليون أكثر تركيزًا على مسائل الحرية السياسية، مثل مدى حق الانتخاب وحرية الصحافة ومساواة المرأة وإلغاء العبودية وتحرير اليهود. كما أنَّ الراديكاليون، من خلال وضع المسألة الاجتماعية في صدارة النقاش، غالبًا ما ذهبوا إلى أبعد بكثير مما كان الليبراليون على استعداد للقيام به في القضايا السياسية، حيث طالب العديد منهم بالاقتراع العام، وحرية صحافة، وأشكال أكثر شمولاً من الديمقراطية. كما ذهبوا إلى أبعد من ذلك بكثير في استعدادهم لاستخدام القوة والعنف لتغيير المشهد السياسي، كلارك هنا يتعاطف مع الليبراليين أكثر من الراديكاليين.
وكالعادة جاءت الثورات المضادة، فقدت الثورات قوتها وتم تمزيق الدساتير. وفي فرنسا كان أداء المتطرفين سيئًا في انتخابات الجمعية الوطنية، وفي أوروبا الوسطى استعادت عائلة هابسبورج - التي اضطرت إلى الفرار من فيينا إلى إنسبروك ( مدينة في النمسا) في مايو - اليد العليا حيث استعادت براغ ( عاصمة التشيك) وأجزاء من شمال إيطاليا.
وأخيرًا أسدل التدخل الأجنبي الستار على الربيع الثوري. وفي عام 1849، اجتاح الجنود الروس لقمع الثورة المجرية نيابة عن النمسا بعد أن جثا الإمبراطور [فرانز جوزيف] على ركبتيه أمام القيصر نيكولاس الأول في وارسو، متوسلاً إليه إنقاذ "المجتمع الحديث من الخراب المؤكد"، شيء أشبه بتوسل دول الخليج ( الإمارات والسعودية) للأمريكان للقضاء على الربيع العربي لاسيما في مصر كما جاء في مذكرات القادة الأمريكان. ففي إبريل/نيسان من نفس العام أرسلت فرنسا- في انتهاك لدستورها- عشرة آلاف رجل لسحق الجمهورية الرومانية التي لم تدم طويلًا لصالح البابا بيوس التاسع، بدعم من رجل الدولة الليبرالي ألكسيس دي توكفيل.
ويصر كلارك على أنَّ الثورات لم تفشل، ومن وجهة نظره، فقد شجعوا الولايات من البرتغال إلى بروسيا على أن تصبح أكثر نشاطًا، وتوجيه الاستثمارات إلى السكك الحديدية والتلغراف، وإنشاء مكاتب إحصائية ووزارات لتعزيز التنمية الاقتصادية والصحة العامة. ومع ذلك إنَّ الشعور بالفشل الذي يحوم حول عام 1848 لا يمكن تبديده من خلال حساب خطوط السكك الحديدية التي وضعت في أعقاب ذلك. جاءت الثورة المضادة من قلب الانقسام حيث يقول كلارك أنه لم يتمكن الراديكاليون ولا الليبراليون (مع بعض الاستثناءات ) من فهم المشاكل المستعصية التي يواجهها المجتمع الريفي، وهي الفئة التي تشمل الغالبية العظمى من الأوروبيين. لقد كان هذا إغفالًا صارخًا، وسيدفعون ثمنه غاليًا بتعبير كلارك.
كانت ثورات مذهلة حيث لعدة أشهر اهتزت الممالك في جميع أنحاء القارة عندما طالب الثوار بوضع دساتير تكرس الحقوق السياسية الأساسية وتكب�� جماح السلطة الملكية. يوضح كلارك: "لم تكن هناك قضية واحدة، بل كان هناك عدد كبير من الأسئلة - حول الديمقراطية، والتمثيل، والمساواة الاجتماعية، وتنظيم العمل، والعلاقات بين الجنسين، والدين، وأشكال سلطة الدولة". يعرض كلارك الاضطرابات على مستوى الشارع من خلال روايات شهود العيان، وينسج هذه المادة في لوحة رائعة عابرة للقارات. ومع تراجع النظام الإقطاعي، ظهرت أشكال سياسية جديدة. كتب كارل ماركس، الشخصية التي تطفو في كتاب كلارك كمراقب "البيان الشيوعي" مع فريدريك إنجلز في أوائل عام 1848. وانتشر القتال عبر الحدود في الوقت الذي كانت فيه الدول القومية الجديدة تكافح من أجل الظهور. يكتب كلارك: "كانت هذه هي الثورة الأوروبية الحقيقية الوحيدة التي حدثت على الإطلاق".
ومن وجهة نظر كلارك، كانت الصحافة هي الوسيلة التي قادت هذه الشرارة في جميع أنحاء أوروبا؛ مما سمح لسكان المدن الذين قرأوا - أو سمعوا - الأخبار بفهم الأحداث باعتبارها مترابطة. قصص من باريس جلبت المتظاهرين إلى الشوارع في برلين. تسببت كلمة سقوط المستشار مترنيخ في فيينا في تذبذب المحكمة البروسية. الإرساليات عبرت المحيطات. في المارتينيك ( جزيرة في شرق البحر الكاريبي) وغوادلوب ( منطقة فرنسية ضمن جزر ليوارد)، تلقت تمردات العبيد هزة إضافية من التقارير التي تفيد بانهيار النظام الملكي في فرنسا، إنها بلاشك روح يناير ٢٠١١ والربيع العربي تحوم حولك وأنت تقرأ عن تلك الأحداث.. أحداث كيف ثاروا، وكيف تشكَّلت الثورة المضادة ضدهم .
هناك نقاط تشابه بين الربيعين، الأوروبي والعربي، منها الطبيعة العفوية التي فاجأت الشرطة والجيش في أواخر الشتاء، والاختلاف بين الثوار أنفسهم على شكل النظام الجديد، هل كرر ثوار الربيع العربي أخطاء ثوار الربيع الأوروبي؟! ربما حتى ولو لم تكن السياقات متطابقة تمامًا، لكن الوعي والخبرات بتجارب الأمم والتراكم كلها أمور غابت عن ثوار يناير، وبطبيعة الحال كانت جديدة على ثوار الربيع الأوروبي، مثلًا يخلص كلارك إلى أنَّ إحدى مفاجآت عام 1848 هي أنَّ القوى المحافظة المناهضة للثورة أثبتت أنها أكثر قسوة ومرونة من الثوار. تمكَّنت الأنظمة الملكية المحاصرة من الحفاظ على دعم المجتمع الريفي، وخاصة الفلاحين، الذين كانوا لا يزالون يشكلون معظم السكان في كل بلد في أوروبا في منتصف القرن التاسع عشر .
يجمع كلارك بين التحليل الشامل والتفسير ومهارة المراسل على مستوى الأرض في سرد الأحداث والتقاط الشخصية بالحيوية والرحمة. الكتاب مليء بأوصاف غير عادية للحواجز التي أقيمت في شوارع باريس وبرلين وفيينا، وللمعارك الفوضوية والدموية بين العمال والبرجوازيين وقوى النظام، وطوال السرد مليء بشخصيات حية، مثل روبرت بلوم ابن الحائك الفقير، مدير المسرح، الذي تم انتخابه لبرلمان فرانكفورت، ينضم إلى الثورة في شوارع فيينا ويتم إعدامه عندما استعادت قوات النظام الملكي السيطرة على المدينة.
تظهر العديد من الشخصيات مرارًا وتكرارًا في جميع أنحاء أوروبا مع تطور الثورة. حارب لودفيج ميروسلافسكي في الانتفاضة البولندية عام 1830، وشارك في الانتفاضة الفاشلة في غاليسيا فقط ليظهر في النضال في باليرمو، ثم في بادن. كما حارب "جوزيف بيم" في بولندا عام 1830، وخدم في المتاريس في فيينا عام 1848، وقاتل إلى الجانب المجري ضد الروس عام 1849، وانتهى به الأمر، بشكل لا يصدق، بعد هزيمة الثورة، حاكمًا لحلب العثمانية. السرد مليء بشخصيات نسائية مفعمة بالحيوية والأهمية، مثل الكاتبة الأمريكية مارغريت فولر، التي اعتنت بالجرحى عندما هاجم الجيش الفرنسي الجمهورية الرومانية التي لم تدم طويلاً في عام 1849.
كتاب على كل حال جدير بالقراءة، لمعرفة كيف يتشكل وعي الأمم، وكيف ناضلوا من أجل حقوقهم، ومعرفة كيف نجحوا وكيف أخفقوا، كلها أمور مهمة في تراث الأمم؛ لأنه واقعيًا تت��رر الإخفاقات بشكل كبير بس تكرار نفس الأخطاء.
November 20, 2023
The revolutions of 1848, began, not in spring, nor in Paris, but in winter 1847 in the most unstable country in Europe…Switzerland! The German Emperor Frederik William IV was the king of Neufchatel, one of the Swiss counties. Ambulances were first used in the final battle that a federal army defeated the amateur revolutionary army after a 25 days battle and 93 dead. In Paris, toasts to Swiss liberty were held in huge banquets, where the price was lowered to allow workers to attend and hear revolutionary speakers from the numerous clubs and secret societies many of which had emerged from masonic lodges. The French revolution began in Paris in February 1848 when the mocked pear shaped king, Louis Phillipe, arrested and tried the cartoonist Philipson; the bourgeois monarch panicked at the popular reaction and banned a banquet. How French! Four months later, in Sydney Australia, the news arrives and the father of our federation, Henry Parkes, began by arranging banquets. Years later at the Eureka Stockade rebellion on the Victorian goldfields, two fugitives from the counter-revolution events in Italy and Germany, Carboni and Vern were leaders sought by the police. Carbon wrote a book about the rebellion but Vern, with a 500 pound price on his head disappeared into the bush and was never heard of again. Victoria in 1856 achieved male suffrage and was the first in the world to create the secret ballot.
In this vast work of 972 pages, Clark, an Australian, shows that the revolutions did not, as we were told in school, swell like a wave and crash over Europe, full of foam and failure but began as a fusion of ideas and emotions that led to almost spontaneous combustion. He took me, in over a month’s fascinating reading from Albania in the east to Iceland in the north, Britain and the USA in the West and Argentina, Chile and Australia in the deep south. He dismissed the Taiping rebellion in China as something quite separate.
Clark frequently bases his opinions on diaries of personal experiences, some of which became published as hastily written first hand experiences afterwards. In this review, I can only find room for the surprises which made my reading so entertaining. If you want a detailed review, go to The London Review of Books (Vol 45, number 11 ).
In Italy, the hated Bourbon King and his Austrian wife of the kingdom of the two Sicilies governed from Naples, was described by Luigi Settembrini as a government ‘whose stupidity and cruelty can hardly be described’…consisting of ‘idiots and thieves’. Betrayed by a priest, he was imprisoned for three years but still published this scathing indictment of the government in 1847 before fleeing to Malta in a British warship. Both Britain and the USA supported the uprisings in Sicily through their consular staff and their fleets. Incredibly, the revolution began in Palermo through a notice on a wall in the marketplace stating that the revolution would begin there next Saturday! Clark suggests that this drew curious crowds and either a panicked or accidental musket shot which fulfilled the prediction. The peasants arrived to support the uprising and then the gentry joined in, ‘when the mob became more feared than the government’. During these events the USA flagship in the harbour fired a broadside in support, using the excuse of Washington’s birthday. In Vienna, a similar notice predicting the fall of Metternich and the government in a month was prescient.
Of all the ironic conjunctions of events and policies, in the early days of action in Rome, Pope Pius IX, succeeding the hated Pope Gregory VI, was hailed as a supporter of reform with huge crowds in St Peter’s Square demanding blessings until 1.30am where the cries of ‘Viva Italia’ and ‘King Pio’ were first heard. However, Pio Nono was the notoriously reactionary figure who later fled down the secret passageway from the Vatican disguised as a country priest with his head bowed to avoid recognition. He lived from November 1848 to April 1850 in a modest house in Gaeta while the revolutionary Roman government declared freedom of religion, including Jews, the end of the death penalty (a world first) , adult male suffrage and policies to improve material conditions for all. Subsequently Pio Nono excommunicated all those elected to the Legislative Assembly and issued a scathingly critical encyclical against republicanism. One of the best eye witness writers on these events was Princess Cristina Trivulso Belgivioso who replied to the Pope in kind. He had accused those in the hospitals that she was administrating of denying dying persons access to priests for the last rites. After refuting this in an open letter to him, she concluded sarcastically that he could verify her report by asking his underlings as ‘all the priests who had exercised their sacred ministry in the hospitals were thrown into the prisons of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.’
Although paintings and statues of the revolution frequently included women, little has been written about their participation until now. Clark quotes them frequently and at some length, not just as eye witness recorders and historians writing of the events but as activists on the barricades and those who threw tiles and stones down on soldiers from the high windows of buildings in narrow streets. However, emancipation and the franchise were laughed at in all male assemblies of governments: women were even banned from attending parliaments as observers or visitors, even in Paris where the female franchise was not won until 1946! However some attended successfully in disguise; not George Sand who repudiated the idea of female representation in government. The first recorded women’s rights convention was held in America.
Emancipation for Jews and Blacks and the end of slavery (including Roma or gypsy slaves) began but varied widely in application with loopholes often being exploited. Ghettoes were opened, the gates of the Roman ghetto were taken off their hinges but reinforced later. Pogroms returned in times of crisis like the potato and grain famines of the forties and fifties. However, Clark convinces me that the revolution was global with no return to 1815, largely because of the successful implementation of constitutions, even the one imposed by the ‘clueless and incompetent’ Emperor Ferdinand in Vienna and the one granted by Frederik William IV in Berlin. In the Netherlands the King was being blackmailed for homosexuality, and close to a nervous breakdown agreed to a constitution and a government reform committee without riots in the streets after he had heard of the events in Weimar. Clark names Denmark as the most successful revolution. Traditional histories emphasised achievements in France, Britain, Italy and Germany where even Bismarck admitted that without the revolution, people like him would never have come to be in government. The governments changed in Hungary, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Wallachia, Moldova, Romania and in the ex-colonies of South America. Who would have thought that the most successful transition to government occurred in Bucharest through an agreement with the Ottoman government before pressure from Russia and Britain led to tis suppression by that same government.
Realpolitik was born. No Napoleonic army spread this revolution, ‘tidings of revolution had to travel in civilian clothes’ and featured ‘a spectacular intellectual biodiversity’. Future governments would be led by technocrats and unemployment and poverty would be alleviated by massive railway, telegraph and road building projects too big for private enterprise companies. The moderate liberals deserted the socialists and revolutionaries but gas and water socialism prevailed. Clark has succeeded in giving me so many insights and new information with this magnificently epic book. I recommend an electronic copy if there is one in the future but my copy came from Waverley Library in Sydney and I recommend that you persuade your libraries to buy copies of this highly significant work which Clark has written in prose that is lucid and entertaining.
June 28, 2023
Clark's book verges on too dense for me to consume in audiobook form, but I made it through. It benefits from his passion and erudite narration, to say nothing of the truly jaw-dropping amount of research it takes to track the multifarious revolutions and counter-revolutions in most European states in 1848-49.
Clark's case, at the end of the book, for the continued relevance of 1848 for today, in which we see institutions like liberal democracy teetering (just as many monarchical systems were in 1848), was particularly strong. How do we respond after massive political upheaval? What will be the new status quo? A straightforward turn to the right, as in Russia? A liberalizing but authoritarian turn, as in Prussia? France under Louis-Napoleon, the most republican of empires?
It is instructive that, on paper, almost every revolution in 1848 failed within a few years - overtaken by counter-revolutions. This is important for us to remember, when most of the revolutions we are familiar with (1776, 1789, 1917, 1948) succeeded.
It is possible to learn from history, Eugene Vodolazhkin has written, but it is not actually possible to learn from historical mistakes and avoid repeating them. Generally, when you set out to avoid one historical mistake, you will fall headlong into another. Leaders should bear this in mind.
Clark's case, at the end of the book, for the continued relevance of 1848 for today, in which we see institutions like liberal democracy teetering (just as many monarchical systems were in 1848), was particularly strong. How do we respond after massive political upheaval? What will be the new status quo? A straightforward turn to the right, as in Russia? A liberalizing but authoritarian turn, as in Prussia? France under Louis-Napoleon, the most republican of empires?
It is instructive that, on paper, almost every revolution in 1848 failed within a few years - overtaken by counter-revolutions. This is important for us to remember, when most of the revolutions we are familiar with (1776, 1789, 1917, 1948) succeeded.
It is possible to learn from history, Eugene Vodolazhkin has written, but it is not actually possible to learn from historical mistakes and avoid repeating them. Generally, when you set out to avoid one historical mistake, you will fall headlong into another. Leaders should bear this in mind.
October 1, 2023
In 1848 there were revolutions all across Europe, from Spain to Ukraine. They were all different: in some they threw out kings, in some the kings offered a constitution in order to keep themselves from being thrown out; in some the peasants aided the revolution, in some they opposed it; some tried to unify nationalities, some tried to break up empires into smaller national states. All were rolled back within a few years.
December 20, 2023
Christopher Clark is an excellent historian and I have been reading his work for close t0 twenty years. This book is a tour de force of a series of events that are extremely difficult to comprehend in their totality. The breadth and depth of the 1848 revolutions and counter-revolutions is really incredible and the links between events in Sicily, France, Austria, Poland, Russia, Wallachia, Hungary, Bohemia, the Papal States, Naples, and Austrian administered Italy are highly distinct from one another and very very difficult to aggregate or to make a coherent whole of. Clark jokes about this in the text, about the way degree to which the word "meanwhile" has to do a LOT of heavy lifting.
Still, in his imitable style, he does as good a job as one can of connecting them. First he contextualizes them in the long aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Napoleonic era as well as the economic and political milieu of the 1820s and the 1830s in Europe. Next he is careful to explain how eruptions in one place led to another and how different groups in each location were moved by different aspects of events in other places. The working class in Berlin might be following and motivated by events in Galicia while the elites were frightened of what had happened in Vienna.
In this way he is able to help the reader make sense of an extremely complex and often confused, even to the participants, set of events. To weigh the forces aligning on each side, and to understand the relations of the parts to one another and to the whole.
Two things struck me about the work. First, having been reading Clark since 2006, you can see the effects of the capture of the academy by the identitarian left throughout the work. He is at pains to fault the revolutionaries for not doing more for the liberation of women despite the fact that they were often participants in the events or at least played supporting roles. The fact that in a muscle powered world with no effective means of birth control women are at a permanent economic and physical disadvantage vis a vis men and dependents of them for most of their lives save a handful of aristocratic women is all one needs to know about why they were not able to gain more power in a revolution that both focused and was decided by material and coercive force. Second he does what he can to integrate the effects of the 1848 revolutions on the colonial empire of France specifically with regard to the issue of slavery. Here he is even handed, pointing out that it was easier for the Republic to free the slaves in the Caribbean because they completely controlled it while ending slavery in Senegal would provoke other African kingdoms which were more highly dependent on slavery and would fear revolts in their own territory. Still, this was a highly peripheral issue and affected only France, since none of the other powers affected possessed colonial empires at the time.
The focus on the marginalized is driven by the political needs of working in a university but it was interesting in its own right. Far more damning is the complete elision of the fact that one of the things that aided the reactionary counter-revolutionaries was the collapse of so many of the revolutionary parliaments into internecine conflict over identitarian grievances occasionally real but more often imagined. Ethnic and national divisions destroyed more than one republican venture in the course of the events and were particularly helpful to the reestablishment of Hapsburg rule. This of course in the DEI/"diversity is our strength" is a heretical conclusion to draw so, despite drawing it in his earlier work "Iron Kingdom" he does not make the point in this work. Rather he quotes Metternrich when he pointed out that the liberals outran the populace which was their base but also significantly more conservative than they were. This resonates with people in the academy more in the Trump era and is not heretical.
The second and more interesting aspect is how many parallels there are to our own time and how a familiarity with the zeitgeist which led to the 1848 uprisings and their confusion and aftermath are an excellent window through which our own era can be judged. I liked this aspect a lot and even though the book will not age well since he references so many events which are salient today but will not be in 20 years time, I think the parallels he draws to the contemporary world are very much on point. The book gives one a lot to think about.
Still, in his imitable style, he does as good a job as one can of connecting them. First he contextualizes them in the long aftermath of the 1789 Revolution and the Napoleonic era as well as the economic and political milieu of the 1820s and the 1830s in Europe. Next he is careful to explain how eruptions in one place led to another and how different groups in each location were moved by different aspects of events in other places. The working class in Berlin might be following and motivated by events in Galicia while the elites were frightened of what had happened in Vienna.
In this way he is able to help the reader make sense of an extremely complex and often confused, even to the participants, set of events. To weigh the forces aligning on each side, and to understand the relations of the parts to one another and to the whole.
Two things struck me about the work. First, having been reading Clark since 2006, you can see the effects of the capture of the academy by the identitarian left throughout the work. He is at pains to fault the revolutionaries for not doing more for the liberation of women despite the fact that they were often participants in the events or at least played supporting roles. The fact that in a muscle powered world with no effective means of birth control women are at a permanent economic and physical disadvantage vis a vis men and dependents of them for most of their lives save a handful of aristocratic women is all one needs to know about why they were not able to gain more power in a revolution that both focused and was decided by material and coercive force. Second he does what he can to integrate the effects of the 1848 revolutions on the colonial empire of France specifically with regard to the issue of slavery. Here he is even handed, pointing out that it was easier for the Republic to free the slaves in the Caribbean because they completely controlled it while ending slavery in Senegal would provoke other African kingdoms which were more highly dependent on slavery and would fear revolts in their own territory. Still, this was a highly peripheral issue and affected only France, since none of the other powers affected possessed colonial empires at the time.
The focus on the marginalized is driven by the political needs of working in a university but it was interesting in its own right. Far more damning is the complete elision of the fact that one of the things that aided the reactionary counter-revolutionaries was the collapse of so many of the revolutionary parliaments into internecine conflict over identitarian grievances occasionally real but more often imagined. Ethnic and national divisions destroyed more than one republican venture in the course of the events and were particularly helpful to the reestablishment of Hapsburg rule. This of course in the DEI/"diversity is our strength" is a heretical conclusion to draw so, despite drawing it in his earlier work "Iron Kingdom" he does not make the point in this work. Rather he quotes Metternrich when he pointed out that the liberals outran the populace which was their base but also significantly more conservative than they were. This resonates with people in the academy more in the Trump era and is not heretical.
The second and more interesting aspect is how many parallels there are to our own time and how a familiarity with the zeitgeist which led to the 1848 uprisings and their confusion and aftermath are an excellent window through which our own era can be judged. I liked this aspect a lot and even though the book will not age well since he references so many events which are salient today but will not be in 20 years time, I think the parallels he draws to the contemporary world are very much on point. The book gives one a lot to think about.
September 8, 2023
When we read about violent upheavals in history — most particularly the French Revolution of 1789 — our habit is to associate them with radical causes, subversive organizations, and characters who emerge from the morass in a more or less confined theatre.
In Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring we are seeing something quite different, a series of events more akin to the Arab Spring the Middle East experienced in 2011-2012 where almost simultaneously independent nations of an entire region of the world seemed to explode with no premeditation. Ergo Clark’s title for this work about the upheavals all over Europe in 1848-1849.
These revolutions are characterized by little rhetoric, virtually no conspiracies, and few leaders either with revolutionary credentials or serious charisma. These revolutionaries didn’t really participate in building from the ruins. That was left more or less to the people who were in power before all the violence broke up the party.
These revolutions were spread across the continent. Sometimes they were about voting rights, or workers’ rights, control over Parliament by linguistic majorities, even a say in government by subject peoples. Some were about a cultural nationalism, but not always. It was the unusual revolution that sought to completely overthrow monarchies.
The upheavals surprisingly started in Switzerland of all places over a move to reinstate Jesuits in the educational system. They spread to France, the German principalities, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Milan, the Netherlands, Budapest, Vienna, Spain, and Prague.
There were initiatives to end slavery of blacks in Guadalupe, to end the repression of Jews, to enfranchise the poor, even to end the slavery of Roma peoples in the area we associate with Romania today. But almost none of these issues were resolved after counter-revolutions which followed almost all of the initial violence.
Women’s rights? Nope.
Post revolutionary states left conservatives and some liberals in power. Radicals were left on the periphery. And new violence broke out this time led by radicals, but these were squelched once more.
The revolutions almost seemed like new opportunities to trick the poor. The very poor didn’t even want the revolutions. In some readings you might say the later Russian Revolution was a big trick on the poor.
In hatred of the Hapsburgs local governments kept trying to redraw the maps with little success.
I think it no accident that Clark focuses on the June Days of 1948 in Paris where radicals invaded and sacked the Chamber of Deputies, a new legislature Parisians had created only months earlier.
The parallels with the January 6, 2021, sacking of the US Capital are abundantly clear.
What is not clear is how historian Clark views the Trump uprise: is it a revolution or a counter-revolution over the moderates in Washington? As in the earlier revolutions, violence did not legitimize it. There was little faith in republican ideals then or now.
I was struck in Clark’s work about how little the Europeans cared about the revolution in America or spouted its ideals.
The authorities of the 1840’s reversed almost all of the gains of the revolutionaries. The rabble were poorly armed. The situation in America is quite different: there are more than 400 million quite lethal firearms in the hands of Americans. There are means to communicate over secret (often encrypted) computer networks, and cheerleaders of the violence in almost every segment of American society, even in the police and likely in the armed forces.
Who could believe even two years ago a coup-d’état would be attempted in modern Germany by neoNazis and white supremacists?
A revolution in America — shrill, chaotic, unhinged — to reverse the gains of the Republic over 200 years is not so unimaginable. It could have succeeded with the first Trump administration. It may yet with a second.
Clark’s book is long and his writing style, well, I frequently nodded off. But I must tip my hat to the range of research used. It had to cover many languages, periods, and a lot of dusty archives. I hope all the researchers got their due in the acknowledgements. I didn’t read them. Sorry.
In Christopher Clark’s Revolutionary Spring we are seeing something quite different, a series of events more akin to the Arab Spring the Middle East experienced in 2011-2012 where almost simultaneously independent nations of an entire region of the world seemed to explode with no premeditation. Ergo Clark’s title for this work about the upheavals all over Europe in 1848-1849.
These revolutions are characterized by little rhetoric, virtually no conspiracies, and few leaders either with revolutionary credentials or serious charisma. These revolutionaries didn’t really participate in building from the ruins. That was left more or less to the people who were in power before all the violence broke up the party.
These revolutions were spread across the continent. Sometimes they were about voting rights, or workers’ rights, control over Parliament by linguistic majorities, even a say in government by subject peoples. Some were about a cultural nationalism, but not always. It was the unusual revolution that sought to completely overthrow monarchies.
The upheavals surprisingly started in Switzerland of all places over a move to reinstate Jesuits in the educational system. They spread to France, the German principalities, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Milan, the Netherlands, Budapest, Vienna, Spain, and Prague.
There were initiatives to end slavery of blacks in Guadalupe, to end the repression of Jews, to enfranchise the poor, even to end the slavery of Roma peoples in the area we associate with Romania today. But almost none of these issues were resolved after counter-revolutions which followed almost all of the initial violence.
Women’s rights? Nope.
Post revolutionary states left conservatives and some liberals in power. Radicals were left on the periphery. And new violence broke out this time led by radicals, but these were squelched once more.
The revolutions almost seemed like new opportunities to trick the poor. The very poor didn’t even want the revolutions. In some readings you might say the later Russian Revolution was a big trick on the poor.
In hatred of the Hapsburgs local governments kept trying to redraw the maps with little success.
I think it no accident that Clark focuses on the June Days of 1948 in Paris where radicals invaded and sacked the Chamber of Deputies, a new legislature Parisians had created only months earlier.
The parallels with the January 6, 2021, sacking of the US Capital are abundantly clear.
What is not clear is how historian Clark views the Trump uprise: is it a revolution or a counter-revolution over the moderates in Washington? As in the earlier revolutions, violence did not legitimize it. There was little faith in republican ideals then or now.
I was struck in Clark’s work about how little the Europeans cared about the revolution in America or spouted its ideals.
The authorities of the 1840’s reversed almost all of the gains of the revolutionaries. The rabble were poorly armed. The situation in America is quite different: there are more than 400 million quite lethal firearms in the hands of Americans. There are means to communicate over secret (often encrypted) computer networks, and cheerleaders of the violence in almost every segment of American society, even in the police and likely in the armed forces.
Who could believe even two years ago a coup-d’état would be attempted in modern Germany by neoNazis and white supremacists?
A revolution in America — shrill, chaotic, unhinged — to reverse the gains of the Republic over 200 years is not so unimaginable. It could have succeeded with the first Trump administration. It may yet with a second.
Clark’s book is long and his writing style, well, I frequently nodded off. But I must tip my hat to the range of research used. It had to cover many languages, periods, and a lot of dusty archives. I hope all the researchers got their due in the acknowledgements. I didn’t read them. Sorry.
November 19, 2023
A few years ago, I read Clark's "Sleepwalkers" on the road to WWI and thought it was absolutely excellent, one of the best histories I've read in recent years, thorough, detailed, and impressive. So when I saw he had a new book out on the Revolutions of 1848, I put it at the top of my reading list.
Three stars out of five. Clearly, I was disappointed.
Oh, he's still as thorough as ever. He still has a solid handle on the material - no doubt about that. But there's a phrase I like to apply to lots of things in life - "you can't see the forest through the trees" - and by God does it ever apply to this book. It's such a detailed and extensive account of a deeply confusing moment in European history that I had trouble finding or remember what broader points were going on. There were so many details on so many trees that I found myself lost in the forest, unable to make heads or tails of the overall lay of the land. This book would've been better (for me at least) if it was less intensive.
The main point, as best I can tell, is that it's wrong to look at the revolutions in terms of success or failure. (He makes an analogy toward the end that we don't look at a foot of snowfall in terms of success or failure, but with impact, so why not do the same with revolutions? I can see what he means, but it's a lousy analogy - snowfalls don't have an actual goal that snowflakes are trying to enact). He does note there were changes. The old guard was largely marginalized in many parts of Europe, as conservatives embraced some level of reforms. Guys like Cavour modeled themselves on England's Peel, merging reform with conservativism. Many liberals and revolutoinaries also moved to the middle. You had the rise of a more bureacratic government, which relied upon statistics, promoted more trade, opened up their economies, bulit more railroads, and did more modernized urban planning. Many places also had adopted constitutions during this time. Even the places that got rid of their constitutions usually ruled with a lighter touch than had been the case previously. A gap emerged between Russia and Europe, as the government doubled down on autocracy while Europe moved towards constitutionalism, and Russia's leftists moved from liberalism to radicalism, disenchanted with European liberalism. These are all valid points, but I'm getting them all from the last 30 or so pages of the 750+ pages of text. Clearly, that's the part of the book I got the most out of it.
I did get a sense of the pace of revolutions. The inital spurt of barricades, the Old Guard caught off guard. The promise of reforms (which included calls for women's rights, and France announcing they were ending slavery in their colonies). Then divisive grows in the ranks of the revolutionaries. Some want to go further than others. Some pull away from the Revolution in a desire for more stability. The conservativies get their groove back and most revolutions were rolled back.
One thing I should admit: I got this from my library. Began it, but then someone else put a hold on it and I had to return it. I put a hold on it, got it back - but there's a 3 week gap where I was stuck without it. That hurt my overall flow of the material, but while that amplifid my problems with ths book, I still would've had trouble with the excessviely tree-heavy nature of this book.
Three stars out of five. Clearly, I was disappointed.
Oh, he's still as thorough as ever. He still has a solid handle on the material - no doubt about that. But there's a phrase I like to apply to lots of things in life - "you can't see the forest through the trees" - and by God does it ever apply to this book. It's such a detailed and extensive account of a deeply confusing moment in European history that I had trouble finding or remember what broader points were going on. There were so many details on so many trees that I found myself lost in the forest, unable to make heads or tails of the overall lay of the land. This book would've been better (for me at least) if it was less intensive.
The main point, as best I can tell, is that it's wrong to look at the revolutions in terms of success or failure. (He makes an analogy toward the end that we don't look at a foot of snowfall in terms of success or failure, but with impact, so why not do the same with revolutions? I can see what he means, but it's a lousy analogy - snowfalls don't have an actual goal that snowflakes are trying to enact). He does note there were changes. The old guard was largely marginalized in many parts of Europe, as conservatives embraced some level of reforms. Guys like Cavour modeled themselves on England's Peel, merging reform with conservativism. Many liberals and revolutoinaries also moved to the middle. You had the rise of a more bureacratic government, which relied upon statistics, promoted more trade, opened up their economies, bulit more railroads, and did more modernized urban planning. Many places also had adopted constitutions during this time. Even the places that got rid of their constitutions usually ruled with a lighter touch than had been the case previously. A gap emerged between Russia and Europe, as the government doubled down on autocracy while Europe moved towards constitutionalism, and Russia's leftists moved from liberalism to radicalism, disenchanted with European liberalism. These are all valid points, but I'm getting them all from the last 30 or so pages of the 750+ pages of text. Clearly, that's the part of the book I got the most out of it.
I did get a sense of the pace of revolutions. The inital spurt of barricades, the Old Guard caught off guard. The promise of reforms (which included calls for women's rights, and France announcing they were ending slavery in their colonies). Then divisive grows in the ranks of the revolutionaries. Some want to go further than others. Some pull away from the Revolution in a desire for more stability. The conservativies get their groove back and most revolutions were rolled back.
One thing I should admit: I got this from my library. Began it, but then someone else put a hold on it and I had to return it. I put a hold on it, got it back - but there's a 3 week gap where I was stuck without it. That hurt my overall flow of the material, but while that amplifid my problems with ths book, I still would've had trouble with the excessviely tree-heavy nature of this book.
October 28, 2023
First, this is a tome! Make no doubt about that; 750 pages of body copy in 12-point font, vs the inflated stuff of 16 point or whatever we get in a lot of non-fiction today means this is a tome.
That said, though I didn't "nod off," unlike reviewers of three stars and less, perhaps because of the amount of territory covered, this one didn't grab me quite the way Clark's magisterial Sleepwalkers did. That may be true because, like Clark himself before writing this book, the revolutions of 1848 haven't grabbed me in the same way as World War I and its run-up.
That said, it is still a solid 4 star, if not a 4.5, and here's a medium-sized summary.
Good definition of liberalism, precise enough for a working definition while acknowledging the breadth of the idea, that it just really arose in the post-Napoleonic area, and didn’t really reach fruition until 1848. Clark says that it basically tried to thread the needle between monarchy and radical democracy. It stood for rule of law, in today’s terms; republicanism but NOT democracy, with a limited franchise (with disputes within it how much to limit the franchise and I note Prussia’s 3-line electorate as one answer), and theoretically free trade though with divergence on how this played out.
Louie Philippe suffered revolutions in 1832 (Victor Hugo’s finale of Les Miz) and 1834. And 1839.
Clark notes that the different revolutions each had individual fuel, and yet were connected. Switzerland and Sonderbund, then the Two Sicilies, then France, then Low Countries, then German Confederation, with Austria also getting spillover from Two Sicilies working up Italy. In other words, a domino effect, but needing homegrown fuel.
Revolution fought by counter-revolution in late 1848, fought back by more radical second revolution in early 1849.
Emancipations part of this. Not women, but blacks in the French Caribbean (albeit with resistance) and theoretically in Senegal. Jews in Europe outside Russia, tho also at times theoretical more than real. In Wallachia, push to end Roma slavery, which was a real thing.
Details of Russian suppression of Wallachian revolution, namely, a stranglehold on grain shipping, a backdrop to Crimean War, as Britain had protested.
A post-1848 chapter notes that even in neo-absolutist Austria, the clock didn’t totally revert to pre-1848.
The conclusion chapter is good as well. Clark notes how 1848 had its effect on the more federal unification of Germany vs the “Piedmont takeover” unification of Italy, with north vs south effects still in play in today’s Italy. Second, he notes that Russian leftists turned away from their counterparts elsewhere in Europe after 1848.
Finally, Clark says that things like anti-COVID protests and Trumpian-type populism may be better understood in light of 1848.
That said, though I didn't "nod off," unlike reviewers of three stars and less, perhaps because of the amount of territory covered, this one didn't grab me quite the way Clark's magisterial Sleepwalkers did. That may be true because, like Clark himself before writing this book, the revolutions of 1848 haven't grabbed me in the same way as World War I and its run-up.
That said, it is still a solid 4 star, if not a 4.5, and here's a medium-sized summary.
Good definition of liberalism, precise enough for a working definition while acknowledging the breadth of the idea, that it just really arose in the post-Napoleonic area, and didn’t really reach fruition until 1848. Clark says that it basically tried to thread the needle between monarchy and radical democracy. It stood for rule of law, in today’s terms; republicanism but NOT democracy, with a limited franchise (with disputes within it how much to limit the franchise and I note Prussia’s 3-line electorate as one answer), and theoretically free trade though with divergence on how this played out.
Louie Philippe suffered revolutions in 1832 (Victor Hugo’s finale of Les Miz) and 1834. And 1839.
Clark notes that the different revolutions each had individual fuel, and yet were connected. Switzerland and Sonderbund, then the Two Sicilies, then France, then Low Countries, then German Confederation, with Austria also getting spillover from Two Sicilies working up Italy. In other words, a domino effect, but needing homegrown fuel.
Revolution fought by counter-revolution in late 1848, fought back by more radical second revolution in early 1849.
Emancipations part of this. Not women, but blacks in the French Caribbean (albeit with resistance) and theoretically in Senegal. Jews in Europe outside Russia, tho also at times theoretical more than real. In Wallachia, push to end Roma slavery, which was a real thing.
Details of Russian suppression of Wallachian revolution, namely, a stranglehold on grain shipping, a backdrop to Crimean War, as Britain had protested.
A post-1848 chapter notes that even in neo-absolutist Austria, the clock didn’t totally revert to pre-1848.
The conclusion chapter is good as well. Clark notes how 1848 had its effect on the more federal unification of Germany vs the “Piedmont takeover” unification of Italy, with north vs south effects still in play in today’s Italy. Second, he notes that Russian leftists turned away from their counterparts elsewhere in Europe after 1848.
Finally, Clark says that things like anti-COVID protests and Trumpian-type populism may be better understood in light of 1848.
February 4, 2024
Probably the most comprehensive survey to appear in English of a seminal yet still poorly understood watershed in Western history. Professor Clark begins with the backstory of Europe's liberal-democratic eruption, and takes us into the aftermath. He avoids abstracting its course into "forces" of economics and politics, introducing us to the real persons, their passions (and doubts) that left such a lasting if obscure difference.
It took me longer than I care to admit to plow through this obelisk of a book, but it's a rich minefield that honors the Australian heritage of its author. As such I'll mention the highlights that struck me - such as the first outbursts in Polish Galicia, where rightfully untrusting peasants did not identify with the aspirations of the privileged liberals they labored under. The violence and outright homicide presages the atrocities of the same region a hundred years later under German occupation, precisely because the underlying issues were stuffed back in their boxes.
Also noteworthy to me was the impact on the United States. We think of American issues as self-contained national problems, but the spillover from European idealists crossed the Atlantic with as much ease as they surmounted the Alps. Northern abolitionists drew inspiration from the idea of "universal emancipation," while their states rights southern enemies - like John C. Calhoun - found encouragement from the German states against Prussian domination. There seems no doubt that it added to the mix leading to civil war, aside from the number of exiles who entered the Union Army. Did John Brown see himself as an American Garibaldi? There's no direct reference to such an identification, but it was part of the period culture. Robert E. Lee was certainly a willing American Bismarck at Harper's Ferry.
Each reader should draw his own insights and conclusions as he digests this historical feast. The author has been taken to task for inserting too many contemporary analogies in his account, like the "revolutionary space" of Tahrir Square in Egypt converging into a field of energy that abolished the distance between people. But isn't this the common spirit of revolution? Clark puts the case best when he concludes: ". . .[As] I wrote this book, I was struck by the feeling that the people of 1848 could see themselves in us."
It took me longer than I care to admit to plow through this obelisk of a book, but it's a rich minefield that honors the Australian heritage of its author. As such I'll mention the highlights that struck me - such as the first outbursts in Polish Galicia, where rightfully untrusting peasants did not identify with the aspirations of the privileged liberals they labored under. The violence and outright homicide presages the atrocities of the same region a hundred years later under German occupation, precisely because the underlying issues were stuffed back in their boxes.
Also noteworthy to me was the impact on the United States. We think of American issues as self-contained national problems, but the spillover from European idealists crossed the Atlantic with as much ease as they surmounted the Alps. Northern abolitionists drew inspiration from the idea of "universal emancipation," while their states rights southern enemies - like John C. Calhoun - found encouragement from the German states against Prussian domination. There seems no doubt that it added to the mix leading to civil war, aside from the number of exiles who entered the Union Army. Did John Brown see himself as an American Garibaldi? There's no direct reference to such an identification, but it was part of the period culture. Robert E. Lee was certainly a willing American Bismarck at Harper's Ferry.
Each reader should draw his own insights and conclusions as he digests this historical feast. The author has been taken to task for inserting too many contemporary analogies in his account, like the "revolutionary space" of Tahrir Square in Egypt converging into a field of energy that abolished the distance between people. But isn't this the common spirit of revolution? Clark puts the case best when he concludes: ". . .[As] I wrote this book, I was struck by the feeling that the people of 1848 could see themselves in us."
May 15, 2024
Clark is without doubt one of the key historians of the modern age. Sleepwalkers was easily the standout book on the orgins of world war one as he offered a compelling new way of looking at a complex problem.
Clark now tackles the 1848/9 revolutions - the period when Europe's revolutionaries roared but ultimately failed to bite.
The book is by definition enormous and covers a huge amount of ground from France to Romania.
At times it is dense and difficult to work through but at times it is fascinating.
The revolutions came about for 3 reasons - the 1815 post Napoleonic settlement tried to turn European politics back to 1789 but the cat was out of the bag. As Clark says the 1820s and 1830s saw a huge development in liberal ideas and the beginnings of socialist ones.
In addition, new farming techniques (mainly the wide spread adoption of the potato) saw populations increase which then came under pressure in the 1840s due to poor harvests and potato blight.
The combination of radical ideas and unhappy workers coalesced in 1848 to cause the revolutions.
Did they fail? Yes and no. By 1852 every concession made had been rescinded and every revolutionary regime had fallen. But in at least 2 areas 1848 was important.
1) it showed that top down change was probably easier to achieve than chaotic bottom up. Both Cavour and Bismarck took this lesson away and 1848 probably served as the catalyst for the top down unifications of Italy and Germany.
2) the idea of civil rights was firmly put on the agenda. One man one vote became a key rallying cry, slavery was abolished in France and elsewhere and women's rights made it on to the agenda - even if it took French women nearly 100 years to get the vote.
So 1848 failed at the time but it set much of the political and social agenda for Europe for nearly a 100 years..
Clark now tackles the 1848/9 revolutions - the period when Europe's revolutionaries roared but ultimately failed to bite.
The book is by definition enormous and covers a huge amount of ground from France to Romania.
At times it is dense and difficult to work through but at times it is fascinating.
The revolutions came about for 3 reasons - the 1815 post Napoleonic settlement tried to turn European politics back to 1789 but the cat was out of the bag. As Clark says the 1820s and 1830s saw a huge development in liberal ideas and the beginnings of socialist ones.
In addition, new farming techniques (mainly the wide spread adoption of the potato) saw populations increase which then came under pressure in the 1840s due to poor harvests and potato blight.
The combination of radical ideas and unhappy workers coalesced in 1848 to cause the revolutions.
Did they fail? Yes and no. By 1852 every concession made had been rescinded and every revolutionary regime had fallen. But in at least 2 areas 1848 was important.
1) it showed that top down change was probably easier to achieve than chaotic bottom up. Both Cavour and Bismarck took this lesson away and 1848 probably served as the catalyst for the top down unifications of Italy and Germany.
2) the idea of civil rights was firmly put on the agenda. One man one vote became a key rallying cry, slavery was abolished in France and elsewhere and women's rights made it on to the agenda - even if it took French women nearly 100 years to get the vote.
So 1848 failed at the time but it set much of the political and social agenda for Europe for nearly a 100 years..
July 27, 2023
Since the Arab spring I have wondered about parallels between our times and the 1848 revolutions, so I was excited when this title came out. The book moves from a framework of post-Napoleonic Europe to the revolutions and then on to their aftermath. It analyzes each of the three periods through the lenses of societal classes, political movements and emerging nations.
As the author points out repeatedly history was complicated: Events in Palermo and Paris influenced movements in Pest and Frankfurt, but each revolution had a distinct local flavor; elites often miscalculated peasants’ loyalties; and local clergy and church hierarchy found themselves on opposite sides of the argument.
The kaleidoscopic approach and rich details make for a very interesting read. However, it is a long slog: The author hopscotches back and forth through Europe in dense prose over 750 pages.
In his conclusion he pushes back against the notion of the revolutions’ failure. The extremes of revolution and counter-revolution inspired a move to the technocratic center, a greater balance of power and significant infrastructure investment. Perhaps our current days of extreme views will also be followed by a new form of pragmatism.
As the author points out repeatedly history was complicated: Events in Palermo and Paris influenced movements in Pest and Frankfurt, but each revolution had a distinct local flavor; elites often miscalculated peasants’ loyalties; and local clergy and church hierarchy found themselves on opposite sides of the argument.
The kaleidoscopic approach and rich details make for a very interesting read. However, it is a long slog: The author hopscotches back and forth through Europe in dense prose over 750 pages.
In his conclusion he pushes back against the notion of the revolutions’ failure. The extremes of revolution and counter-revolution inspired a move to the technocratic center, a greater balance of power and significant infrastructure investment. Perhaps our current days of extreme views will also be followed by a new form of pragmatism.
January 24, 2024
I know there are mixed opinions about this long and complex book, but I absolutely loved it. I am in awe of Clark’s command of the multiple national stories, and his ability to weave them together in a treatment that is at once chronological and thematic. The early chapters, on the background to the events of 1848-49, are superb. The pen portraits of major figured are incisive and often moving. (I now want to read a full biography of Robert Blum.)
The closing reflections on resonances with our own time have struck some readers as glib, but I found them thoughtful and responsible—and you can always skip them if that sort of thing is not to your taste.
I listened to the audiobook (33 hours!), read by Clark himself. Some have complained they find his style stodgy, but I didn’t. Every once in a while he goes too far in using stock characterizations when declaiming quoted material, but in general I found him an excellent reader of his own work.
Given its length and complexity this won’t be everyone’s choice, but well worth the effort and at times really enthralling.
The closing reflections on resonances with our own time have struck some readers as glib, but I found them thoughtful and responsible—and you can always skip them if that sort of thing is not to your taste.
I listened to the audiobook (33 hours!), read by Clark himself. Some have complained they find his style stodgy, but I didn’t. Every once in a while he goes too far in using stock characterizations when declaiming quoted material, but in general I found him an excellent reader of his own work.
Given its length and complexity this won’t be everyone’s choice, but well worth the effort and at times really enthralling.
April 6, 2024
Clark has taken on a seemingly impossible task in narrating this dauntingly complex and multifarious series of events, but he brings clarity and narrative brio to the story of Europe’s mid century political upheavals. The complex nature of the events make it unlikely that anyone could narrate this story in a manner accessible to anyone but a professor of modern European history, but Clark comes close. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a few editorial additions could have helped immensely: 1. A timeline, 2. A key to the principal national, imperial and state organizations (it took me several hundred pages to figure out that Piedmont, Sardinia, and Savoy were more or less synonyms for the northwestern Italian region, for example), 3. A glossary of major dramatis personae, and 4. A brief (8-10 page) summary of the post-Napoleonic political settlements that form the main backdrop against which these revolutions were played out. The lack of even one of these necessary aids is my only reason for a less than five star review.
June 7, 2023
This is an outstanding piece of work. It is comprehensive in that it describes the background to the various uprisings and upheavals in 1848 and 1849 in a clear and logical manner. It goes on to narrate and analyse the different events, with a good command of primary sources and well founded judgments. I like the way in which Clark moves between the different events in the course of his analysis. I also very much applaud the way in which Clark discusses the impact of the 1848-49 revolutions on different ethnic and gender groups, and on the global communities. This is not a Euro-centric account, even though the main events occurred on that continent.
Some lesser known events are recounted, such as the problems on the Ionian Islands, and in this way, this is far more wide-ranging that the usual concentration on events in France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Hungary.
The book is a great work of scholarship but is also highly readable and informative. I highly recommend it.
Some lesser known events are recounted, such as the problems on the Ionian Islands, and in this way, this is far more wide-ranging that the usual concentration on events in France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Hungary.
The book is a great work of scholarship but is also highly readable and informative. I highly recommend it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews