Revolutionary Spring
Fighting for a New World 1848-1849
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
'One of the best history books you will read this decade' History Today
'Fascinating, suspenseful, revelatory, alive' The Times
There can be few more exciting or frightening moments in European history than the spring of 1848. As if by magic, in city after city, from Palermo to Paris to Venice, huge crowds gathered, sometimes peaceful and sometimes violent, and the political order that had held sway since the defeat of Napoleon simply collapsed.
Christopher Clark's spectacular new book recreates with verve, wit and insight this extraordinary period. Some rulers gave up at once, others fought bitterly, but everywhere new politicians, beliefs and expectations surged forward. The role of women in society, the end of slavery, the right to work, national independence and the emancipation of the Jews all became live issues.
Clark conjures up both this ferment of new ideas and then the increasingly ruthless and effective series of counter-attacks launched by regimes who still turned out to have many cards to play. But even in defeat, exiles spread the ideas of 1848 around the world and - for better and sometimes much worse - a new and very different Europe emerged from the wreckage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bitter defeat bequeathed lasting victories in the pan-European revolutions of 1848, according to this sweeping history. Cambridge historian Clark (Iron Kingdom) untangles the chaotic political conflagrations that engulfed Europe, starting with a rebellion in Sicily; then moving to Paris, where an uprising forced French king Louis Philippe to abdicate to a revolutionary provisional government; then on to Vienna, Berlin, and other capitals where governments conceded constitutional reforms, an end to censorship, the emancipation of Jews, and other freedoms. These euphoric liberal triumphs gave way, he continues, to acrimonious divisions between middle-class revolutionary leaders and radicals who demanded guaranteed jobs, wages, and labor rights for workers—in Vienna even the choirboys went on strike—along with nationalist programs that threatened to unravel Europe's empires. The revolutions seemed to fail in 1849, when liberals and conservatives united to bloodily reimpose authoritarian, monarchical control, but Clark argues that they left behind a durable new regime of constitutional, parliamentary, reformist politics. Clark integrates the welter of local conflicts into a coherent grand narrative, grounding it in searching analyses of the era's economic and social tensions, political instabilities, and ideological fervors while also spotlighting the magnetic personalities (Karl Marx, Richard Wagner) and tragic romance of the upheaval. It's a magisterial recreation of an explosion that birthed the modern world. Illus.
