The European Revolutions, 1848-1851

This is a student textbook, designed to introduce, in an accessible manner, all the principal themes and problems of this sometimes bewildering period in European history. Professor Sperber's account, which is supplemented by extensive notes for further reading and biographies of the principal individuals involved, incorporates the very latest scholarship on the revolution as a social and political mass movement. It describes the events of the various national revolutions (both in 1848, and the subsequent, often-neglected period 1849-51), analyses the contrasting social and political tensions underlying the outbreak of revolution, explores the different varieties of revolutionary experience, and compares the events of 1848-51 both with the previous wave of 1789-95 and the successor of 1917-23.