HST6372 – Europe in Revolution: 1848

The 1848 revolutions represented a truly pan-European phenomenon, one which gave rise to several republican experiments, an unprecedented development of the public sphere and to the politicisation of new sectors of Europe's society. The course will analyse the causes of the revolutionary wave in Europe and discuss both the commonalities and the regional or national peculiarities of these events. Attention will be devoted to specific case-studies in France, the Habsburg Empire, the Italian and German states. The course will look at the consequences that the emigration of the revolutionary elites after 1848 had on the development of democratic and socialist ideas. Finally, it will discuss the historiography of the revolutions and the impact that this trans-national event had on European society, politics and political thought in the following decades.