# The Age of Revolutions II: 1848, Nationalism and Liberalism

History II · Contemporary History · https://tryals.app/learn/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism

## The Turning Point That Failed to Turn

In 1814–15, the **Congress of Vienna** rebuilt Europe under Metternich. It prevented a general European war for nearly a century. However, it also suppressed forces unleashed by the Revolution, causing opposition to build.

Three ideologies emerged in response:

* **Liberalism**: Favoured constitutional rule, equality before the law, and free trade. It restricted voting to the propertied elite rather than supporting full democracy.
* **Nationalism**: Held that the nation defines legitimate authority. It inspired movements like **Mazzini's Young Italy** (founded in 1831).
* **Socialism**: Gained major momentum in **February 1848** when Marx and Engels published the *Communist Manifesto*.

Scholars now view nations as modern inventions rather than ancient realities. Key works by Anderson, Gellner, as well as Hobsbawm and Ranger, all appeared in **1983**. Weber similarly showed how rural French peasants became patriotic Frenchmen only in the late 19th century.

The revolutions of **1848** spread across the continent with unprecedented speed:

| Month, 1848 | Where | Outcome by 1849 |
|---|---|---|
| January | Palermo | Suppressed |
| February | Paris | Republic declared; Louis-Philippe abdicates |
| March | Vienna, Berlin, Milan | Metternich flees; Austrian control restored |
| March–May | Frankfurt Parliament | German crown refused by Prussian king |
| March | Hungary | Crushed with Russian military aid |

Most political gains collapsed quickly. In France, the June Days turned the new republic against Parisian workers. Louis-Napoléon seized power and became emperor by 1852.

Yet lasting transformation occurred: **serfdom was abolished in the Habsburg lands** in September 1848.

Unification ultimately arrived from above rather than through revolution:

* **Italy** unified between 1859 and 1861, aided by French intervention.
* **Germany** was forged by Prussian military victories and proclaimed at Versailles in **1871**.

> **Common pitfall:** Treating nations as ancient entities that merely woke up. Modern states used institutions to forge their populations into unified nations.

## Practice questions

11 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Liberals in 1848 generally wanted a franchise limited by property rather than universal suffrage. Why is that consistent with their principles rather than a betrayal of them?

A. Full civic equality under the law required equal distribution of tax burdens
B. Government by the propertied and educated, safe from both monarchs and crowds
C. Temporarily appeasing absolute monarchs until stable constitutions were built
D. Universal suffrage was an unworkable socialist idea from the 1848 uprisings

**Answer:** B. Government by the propertied and educated, safe from both monarchs and crowds

**Why:** Liberalism in this period is a doctrine about lawful, limited, constitutional government, not about popular sovereignty. Property was taken as the guarantee of the independence needed to vote well. The June Days make the logic visible: the same men who overthrew a king in February shot down Parisian workers in June without changing their principles.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/liberals-in-1848-generally-wanted-a-franchise-limited-by-property

### 2. Sort each demand or idea by whether it belongs to LIBERALISM or to NATIONALISM as the terms were used in this period.

**Answer:**

- Liberalism: A written constitution limiting the monarch’s power, A franchise restricted to holders of property, Free trade and the rule of law
- Nationalism: The nation as the legitimate unit of political authority, A shared language and culture as the basis of a state, Unification of politically divided territories

**Why:** The two often marched together in 1848 and are logically independent, which is why they came apart afterwards. A national state can be authoritarian, and a liberal constitution can govern a multinational empire. Germany after 1871 is the standard demonstration: the nationalists won and the liberals did not.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/sort-each-demand-or-idea-by-whether-it-belongs-to-liberalism-or-to

### 3. The revolutions of 1848 achieved nothing that outlasted their suppression.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** Serfdom was abolished in the Habsburg lands in September 1848 and never reimposed, which transformed the legal position of the largest peasant population in central Europe. The political revolutions failed almost everywhere; the social one in the countryside did not.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/the-revolutions-of-1848-achieved-nothing-that-outlasted-their

### 4. Arrange these events of 1848 and after in order.

**Answer:**

1. The Communist Manifesto is published
2. Louis-Philippe abdicates in Paris
3. Metternich flees Vienna
4. Serfdom is abolished in the Habsburg lands
5. Frederick William IV refuses the crown offered by the Frankfurt Parliament
6. Louis-Napoléon seizes power in a coup

**Why:** The speed of the first three is what made 1848 feel like a continental event: a pamphlet, an abdication and the flight of the architect of the Vienna order inside six weeks. The last two show the counter-movement working at the same pace in the other direction.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/arrange-these-events-of-1848-and-after-in-order

### 5. Complete the account of how nations were made.

**Answer:** Since **1983**, when Anderson, Gellner and the Hobsbawm and Ranger volume all appeared, historians have treated nations as **constructed** rather than discovered. Eugen Weber showed French peasants being turned into Frenchmen by schools, railways and **conscription** as late as the end of the nineteenth century. In Italy and Germany the **state** preceded and produced the nation rather than the reverse.

**Why:** The claim is not that national feeling is fake but that it is made, and by identifiable institutions. Once you look for the schoolteacher, the railway timetable and the conscription list, the nation stops being the explanation of nineteenth-century politics and becomes one of the things nineteenth-century politics produced.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/complete-the-account-of-how-nations-were-made

### 6. Nineteenth-century nationalism defined the nation as the sole source of political legitimacy. How does this principle directly challenge the order established by the Congress of Vienna?

A. It rejects dynastic sovereignty in favour of collective self-determination
B. It demands the total abolition of constitutional monarchy across the continent
C. It seeks to eliminate all existing linguistic and cultural differences in Europe
D. It requires every European state to grant full universal suffrage to its people

**Answer:** A. It rejects dynastic sovereignty in favour of collective self-determination

**Why:** Metternich's order rested on dynastic legitimacy and imperial balance rather than popular sovereignty. Equating national self-determination with republicanism or universal democracy confuses distinct nineteenth-century currents that frequently clashed.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/nineteenth-century-nationalism-defined-the-nation-as-the-sole-source

### 7. Match each thinker or writer to what they contributed.

**Answer:**

- Mazzini → Young Italy, founded 1831
- Marx and Engels → The Communist Manifesto of February 1848
- Benedict Anderson → The nation as an imagined community
- Eugen Weber → Peasants turned into Frenchmen by schools and railways

**Why:** Putting the activists beside the historians shows what changed. Mazzini believed the Italian nation existed and needed liberating; Anderson and Weber describe how such a belief is produced. Neither position dismisses the other, the belief was real and it was also manufactured, and both facts do historical work.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/match-each-thinker-or-writer-to-what-they-contributed

### 8. Arrange the stages of the French sequence from 1848 to 1852.

**Answer:**

1. Louis-Philippe abdicates and a republic is proclaimed
2. The June Days set the republic against the Parisian workers
3. Louis-Napoléon is elected president by a large majority
4. A coup dissolves the assembly and extends his power
5. The Second Empire is proclaimed

**Why:** The June Days are the hinge. Once the republic had shot down the workers who made it, its social base was narrow enough for a plebiscitary strongman to take it over with popular consent, and Louis-Napoléon won his elections and his plebiscites. The Second Empire is not the defeat of 1848 by the old order but by something new.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/arrange-the-stages-of-the-french-sequence-from-1848-to-1852

### 9. In which year was the German Empire proclaimed at Versailles?

**Answer:** 1871

**Why:** **1871**, on 18 January, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, a location chosen to humiliate France and one that shaped French politics for the next two generations. The new empire was a federal monarchy under Prussia with universal male suffrage for the Reichstag and a government answerable to the emperor, not to it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/in-which-year-was-the-german-empire-proclaimed-at-versailles

### 10. The Congress of Vienna settlement of 1814 to 1815 was followed by ninety-nine years without a general European war.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True.** The Concert of Europe did not prevent wars; it prevented general ones, by keeping the great powers in conversation and treating major changes as matters for collective settlement. Its slow breakdown after 1871, and especially after 1890, is a large part of the background to 1914.

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### 11. Historians describe Italy and Germany as cases where the state produced the nation rather than the other way round. What kind of evidence supports that claim?

A. Popular plebiscites and universal democratic ballots established centralised political structures before any state initiative took place
B. Schools, conscription, railways and a standardised language spread national identity after unification, not before it
C. Pre-existing linguistic commonalities and ancient ethnic identities spontaneously swept away regional divisions across both territories
D. Spontaneous revolutionary insurrections driven by rural peasant majorities successfully toppled the ruling dynastic regimes in 1848

**Answer:** B. Schools, conscription, railways and a standardised language spread national identity after unification, not before it

**Why:** The evidence is institutional and it is datable: literacy campaigns, a national curriculum, universal conscription mixing regions in one army, and rail networks that made a national market and a national press possible. Weber traced the same process in France, where a state far older than Italy was still nationalising its peasantry in the 1880s.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-age-of-revolutions-ii-1848-nationalism-and-liberalism/historians-describe-italy-and-germany-as-cases-where-the-state