Revolutions Aren't Always Revolutionary

Last year we learned about the American and French Revolutions.  Most recently, in history class, we focused on several Atlantic Revolutions.  The essential question for this unit is, "Were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded?"  We began this lesson by discussing Alexis de Tocqueville’s, who was a liberal Frenchman, comment, “We are sleeping on a volcano.  Do you not see that the Earth trembles anew?  A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.”  We analyzed this quote on a symbolic level and classified the wind as the ideas of the liberals and nationals that were starting to be spread around and heard by people who were unhappy with conservatism. The storm in the horizon could be interpreted as the revolution.  We also connected this quote to a map that showed armies being sent in around countries in Europe trying to repress revolutions.  The liberals and nationals are walking on a sleeping volcano, and as they spread their ideas, more thoughts about starting revolutions started to spread throughout Europe.  After talking about Alexis de Tocqueville’s comment, we went on to discuss Klemens Von Metternich’s comment, “When France sneezes, Europe catches a cold.”  The sneeze that this metaphor references is the ideas that Napoleon created in France, after the revolution.  Some of these ideas were meritocracy, more available education, and the elimination of serfdom and government labels.  Napoleon spread around these ideas, “or germs”, through Europe and the Europeans agree with his ideals and caught this “cold” of revolution.  Most Historians believed that all of these revolutions were failures.  We then made a timeline of successes and failures that documented the complete success, partial success, partial failure, and complete failures.  We were then divided into groups and each given one of five different revolutions; the 1825 Decembrist Revolt, 1830 France rebellion, 1848 France rebellion, 1848 Frankfurt Assembly, and the 1848 Hungry rebellion.  In our groups, we each read background information and skimmed the primary sources on our topic in order to take notes on the country, date, goals, opponent, outcome, and reasons for a success or failure for each of our rebellions.  Then, we read our primary sources to find quotes that described the goals, opponent, and outcome of our topics and wrote sourcing information about the author.  After each group had completed their research, we then started to create a survey monkey with questions about our topic.  We then completed each group’s survey monkey to gain a general consensus about each rebellion.

This is an image of the Frankfurt Assembly.

            My group was assigned the 1848 Frankfurt Assembly.  This assembly took place in Frankfurt, Germany in the years of 1848 to 1849.  Some of the goals of the Frankfurt Assembly were to have a national unity and liberal reform.  Liberals wanted to have a constitutional Monarchy or a republic.  The goal of the rebels was squashed by the King.  It is even said in "“Between Myself and My Pope..." (1848)", “There, the king made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of allowing his God-given rule to be diminished by a piece of paper, namely a constitution.”  While Nationalists wanted a united German state.  Hence, there were two conflicting groups of reformers involved in this assembly.  Even though there were two different groups of rebels, they were both opposing the same opponent; the conservatives and King Federik William IV of Prussia.  The outcome of the Frankfurt Assembly was that the rebels went against the conservatives which resulted in many deaths and people fleeing to the United States.  People fled to the U.S. because there was a promise of a democratic government and economic opportunity in this country.  Another reason why they fled to America was because the revolt was crushed and there was no hope for reform.  These outcomes made the Frankfurt Assembly an obvious failure.  The conservatives crushed the revolt in the early stages.  In Karl Marx’s, “The Assembly at Frankfurt”, he states, “The resolution passed the day before yesterday has destroyed the Frankfurt Parliament.”  Another reason for why this assembly was a failure was because there were two groups of rebels that couldn't come up with shared goals together.  The liberals and nationalists also didn't have an army because Federik William IV sent an army to shut down the assembly.  The results of our Survey Monkey were very good, so our class now has a general foundation of what went on in the Frankfurt Assembly.

This is is a screenshot from one of our questions from my group's Survey Monkey.

To answer the essential question, I do think that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really were failures as many historians have concluded.  The Frankfurt Assembly of 1848 accomplished nothing; the two groups of rebels never came to a consensus on how to revolt against the conservatives which led, ultimately, to a failed revolt.  Worse than the Frankfurt Assembly, was the Decembrist Revolt in Russia in the year of 1825.  After Tsar Nicholas I, who preferred the military rather than politics, passed away and the rebel’s idea of assassinating was diminished, and instead of Constantine being elected as emperor, Tsar Alexander became the next Tsar.  Russians had few rights and were never granted a constitution.  When the rebels revolted Nicholas fired back and the rebels lost, continuing their life of misery.  Besides the revolts in Germany and Russia, there were other failed revolts, such as the French Revolution.  This revolution, that sparked all others to fall in place, didn't end the way the radicals had hoped.  The peasants revolted against the monarchy, but by doing so, thousands of people died.  I agree with the historians when they say that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were really failures because when you look at the majority of these rebellions, they all had flaws, rebel groups couldn't agree to unify, they had no army, they were squashed by the government, or the outcome resulted in thousands of deaths. 

Sources:

Background Information.

“”Between Myself and My People…” (1848).” 

“Speech to the Frankfurt Assembly, 1848.”  Johann Gustav Droysen.

“The Assembly at Frankfurt.”  Karl Marx.  November 22.

“Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia: Proclamation of 1849.”

“The German Fatherland.”  Ernst Moritz.