Consequences of the 1848 Revolutions

Question 1

Good: Increase in Freedom

Answer 1

Spread liberal and national ideas around - inspiring future generations of Italy to unify the country

• Denis Mack Smith “the events of 1848 left a deep impression on Italian liberals and nationalists and helped to create a common language of political and social reform.”
• Piedmont-Sardinia: constitutional monarchy - Statue of Albertino: all males over the age of 25 allowed to vote + Sardinian electorate had grown from 3,000 - 50,000
• Lucy Riall, “The constitution of 1848 was a major step forward for the cause of constitutionalism and political reform in Italy. It gave a voice to a wider range of people than ever before and established a framework for democratic government.”
• In Tuscany, for example, the Grand Duke Leopold II abolished serfdom and granted land to small farmers.
• In 1846, before the reforms, only 8% of the rural population owned land, while in 1861, after the unification of Italy, this figure had risen to 40%.

Question 2

Good: Significant social unity in the Italian states between 1848 and 1849.

Answer 2

• General revolutionary enthusiasm present though the social classes across the whole of the Italian peninsula (not to mention Sicily).
• Neapolitan pamphlet, authored by a middle class liberal Settembrini, relays the dreadful living conditions of peasants living under Bourbon rule → united by a common displeasure with absolutist rule.
• This perspective is advanced by Duggan who argued that the revolutions of 1848 “sounded the death-knell of absolutism.”
• Indeed, the constitutional demands of the middle-class liberals in Milan, Florence, Piedmont, Rome, Naples, and others, were universally accompanied by complaints against poor living conditions, wages and high prices.