In February 1848, the revolution in France (deposing the “July Monarchy” of King Louis-Philippe, and inaugurating the Second Republic) set off a wave of attempted revolutions, affecting every part of Europe except for Russia, the UK, Spain and Portugal. Shock waves spread as far as Brazil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 The revolutionaries all sought press freedom, religious freedom, democratic government. They were also influenced by the rising sensibilities of nationalism. In the case of Germany, the revolutionaries wanted political unification of a new nation-state; in Austria, dismemberment of a multinational dynastic empire; in Poland, the end of foreign rule and reinstatement of a historic nation-state; in Italy – I’m not clear what the Italians wanted, except to get rid of the Austrians and maybe the pope. All these revolutions were shortly and violently put down, and the monarchical-aristocratic governments clamped down hard to prevent any resurgence.
What if they had succeeded? How would that have affected the subsequent course of European history? How would it have affected the course of colonial imperialism? Would it have prevented, or hastened, the rise of Communism and fascism?
They did succeed. Just not in the way they had hoped. Every revolution brought gains for the middle class, and expanded the ideas of democracy and the like. Just because the Revolution failed didn’t mean that the revolution halted.
You could make a case for that, but the 1848 revolutionaries (many of whom had to flee to the United States, especially from Germany) did not think they had succeeded at all. What if they had succeeded in their stated, immediate aims?
Certainly the small Germany would have been the result, but it seems unlikely Prussia would have been happy with just that. I think there would still have been at least a fight with Austria later, though I think you’re right that things could have gone smoother with Germany in the latter half of the 19th Century.
Even with a sustained ‘small Germany’ (with a correspondingly weaker Imperial era ) and an enlarged Austria, World War I might not have been all that different. Although on the other hand with the 1848 revolution succeeding, the liberals would probably have been stronger so perhaps Bismarck wouldn’t have been able to create the state he did.
Do you mean a Germany with or without Prussia? (The King of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was offered the crown of Germany by the Frankfurt Parliament but he refused to "pick up a crown from the gutter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Parliament) Suppose they had offered it instead to the Habsburg Emperor of Austria, and he had accepted? That would have created a German state including most German territories in Europe except for Prussia (and including a lot of non-German territory besides).
Well, in real life, they did offer it to the Hapsburg Emperor…but assuming the 1848 revolutions had succeeded, the non German parts of Austria probably would have seceeded (revolutions broke out in Prague, where a pan-Slavic council was held, Hungary, and Milan).
I guess since we’re speaking of hypotheticals I shouldn’t have said ‘certainly’, but I was thinking of a Prussian-led state (e.g. Friedrich accepts the crown). No doubt the revolutionaries would have preferred a ‘large Germany’, and it probably would have gone the way Captain Amazing describes. But in that case, it’s possible that the ‘large Germany’ would have industrialized better than Austria historically did, and then things would look rather differently - Prussia might have remained a separate state well into the 20th century, and the Hapsburgs would have lost power, replaced by a democratic government. Would this have prevented World War I? Maybe not, but I wonder if it would have turned into a large-scale war so quickly.