Differences And Similarities Between American And European Revolutions

“Each revolution must be assessed in its own context, each had a distinctive impact. The revolutions spread from one point to another. They interacted to a limited extent. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each therefore demands its own narrative…” (Stearns, 1947). This excerpt was taken from a book about the European revolutions of 1848, but could have easily been talking about the recent Arab Spring in 2011. The striking parallels between the two uprisings are remarkable. In 1848, revolutionary zeal erupted across continental Europe. The waves of revolution were set in motion in France and then it did not take long before the rest of Europe was hit by a storm of revolts. Like a domino effect, Denmark, German States, the Italian States,
(Nazemroaya, 2011). In 19th century Europe, a lot of economic changes were portrayed by the consolidation of wealth caused by massive unemployment as well as the outbreak of famines. The same thing happened in 2011 due to the impact of neoliberal reforms and rising food prices. Though both revolutions were inspired by the ideas of liberal nationalism and democracy, the mostly middle class protesters in 1848 had, like the Arabs, very different goals depending on which country they were in. In Hungary for instance, they wanted independence from Austria. In what we now call Germany, they wanted to unify the German-speaking people into one single state. In France, the masses wanted to overthrow the monarchy once again. In some countries, revolution led to battles between different ethnic groups while in others, the uprisings were brought to a stop by outside intervention. All in all, in a general way, we could say that most of the 1848 rebellions “failed” in their goals. The Hungarians managed to get rid of the Austrians, but only for a short period of time. Germany was not able to unite. The French managed to create a republic, which collapsed only a few years later. So many constitutions were written only to be discarded. Historian A.J.P Taylor once called the Revolutions of 1848, a moment at which “history reached a turning point and failed to turn.” However, in the
However, the European network was still very restricted, there were rumors that after the revolutions, people used carrier pigeons to make the connections between the telegraph stations and railheads. There seemed to be only one time when the telegraph spread the news from one European capital to another and in that case it did not spark a revolution. The message warned Metternich of the fall of the French monarch, but it did not reach him until 5 days later when everyone had already heard the news from the newspaper. A more popular form of technology at the time, which was more effective in spreading the word from country to country, was steam power in the form of the steam train and riverboat which were used to transmit news and carry political figures to the scene of action. The initial wave of the revolution of 1848 was lead largely by steam power. One of the major events was when word of the fall of Metternich in Vienna on March 13 arrived in Budapest on the 14th of March carried by a paddle steamed that commonly sailed down the Danube from Vienna. The news arrived by train in Prague on the 15th, Berlin on the 16th and Milan on the 17th of March. Venice learned about the occurrence on the 17th as well through the Lloyd Line steamer that had sailed from Trieste. The European rail and steam network was so disconnected that it took so many days for the news