1848: Year of Revolution

All the nuance of a College Republican explaining why poverty is actually good for poor people to a girl who is desperately scanning the room trying to make eye contact with her friends.Without even getting into the author’s biases - the thing is just incredibly poorly written. Most of the sentences are bad sentences. They come together to form awkward paragraphs. And these paragraphs come one after another with only the slightest hint of narrative coherence. Single sentences jump across decades and continents. Ideas are introduced and then abandoned. It’s impossible to tell whether any given clause is a key point of argument or a non sequitur offered just because the author wanted to add embellishments in order to appear supremely well-versed in the topic at hand.But speaking of the topic at hand…what exactly was it? At no point was I able to discern how the work contributes anything to the popular understanding - much less the scholarship - of the mid-19th-century revolutions of Europe that is not already available within a single degree of linkage from the Wikipedia Entry on Karl Marx.And speaking of Karl Marx - boy does this author not like him and his ideas! And he assumes the reader doesn’t like him either. If he credited the reader with a basic intellectual skepticism, he might have offered some sort of structured argument supporting his Malthusian assertions about the role of overbreeding in the destitution of the 19th century proletariat and the benevolence of capitalism in lifting the unwashed masses to their higher states of indebted toiling.Overall skip it - This book deserves 0 stars; I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because everyone writes off 1-star reviews and my hope is that I’ll actually help one person make the right decision: don’t buy this book.

Well written and balanced account of turbulent time. It’s a broad topic served up well. Plenty of detail is offered in an unbiased way.

This a deep and complex book about the first attempt to build a Democratic Europe. It failed, but that failure clarified the political currents that still energize and divide European nations.

The book, in my view, will be more enjoyable for those who already have a strong understanding of the time period and events.I chose the book because I had never studied this period of history, or the 1848 period. It was really a tough read as it is so detailed one has to take a lot of notes and do additional research to follow along. (That’s just me though.)I will read it again in a few years after I find a broader survey of the period to study.The book is very well documented and researched and I do still highly recommend because it is effective historical analysis and interesting to see how 1848 event are tied to events in our own time.

The style is readable, and it filled a gap in my knowledge of that time and place. Worth the time to read.

This book was well written, though a bit dull in parts. It fills in the history of the revolutionary year of 1848 well and shows how relevant it is to understanding Europe’s present history. It is also a good primer for those interested in how revolution and revolutionaries came to be viewed by our own time.

I have been delighted to know this historian through this book. In spite of the many complexities of the 1848 outburst in Europe, Rapport manage to keep clarity, connect everything, and give excellent analysis.

A very well written and insightful book that expanded my knowledge and understanding of this crucial time of European history.

After the Napoleonic Wars, and the Peace of 1815, strongly conservative governments across Europe intended to keep their countries at peace, but under the methods of rule which they were used to - France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain all had their own particular methods of constitutional or autocratic rule, and each was determined to maintain their ways. But they faced a growing wave of resentment from many of those that they ruled. Torn by growing ideas of nationalism and liberalism (which often did not struggle for the same goals), social unrest was also growing across Europe with the advent of industrialisation. In many places, literacy rates were growing, and people were more than ever determined to discuss ideas, and to fight for their rights as they saw them. European economies and society were changing, but the rulers, many of whom were influenced by the ideas of Metternich wanted to maintain Europe as it had been. Any expansion of rights for and by the people were hard-fought and bitterly given. Economic despair, coupled with social upheavals combined to foment political unrest which the structures of the old regime were not designed to sustain. The cry for reform could easily turn into a shout for revolution.The first chapter of this book sets up the background throughout Europe, from the fall of Napoleon to 1847. The second chapter narrates the (largely) chronological and geographical revolutions that rippled across the continent and its colonies. The next two chapters discuss the attempts to settle into a new path after the fighting; thus the third chapter discusses the `national question' - "the problem of political unity and the place of ethnic minorities within the new liberal order"; the fourth chapter discusses the `social question' - "how to deal with the desperate poverty that afflicted so much of the population, both as part of the wider structural changes in the economy and in the acute distress of the 1840s". Chapter 5 discusses and narrates the counter-revolution.This is a great book; the author has successfully (and very clearly and concisely) captured an incredible lot of information covering a hugely wide and disparate geographical area, with multiple cultures, political scenarios and outcomes, and made it a compelling narrative. I can only imagine how difficult a task this was to achieve. The result is a very readable and very approachable narrative on a huge subject; daunting to think about, it must have been hugely daunting to compose; but it's not daunting for the reader, who can sit back and enjoy the journey with a very accomplished book written by a very authoritative author. Totally recommended.

This was a phenomenal book which explored not only the revolutions themselves, but the origins of them and parallels in todays society. I really enjoyed reading this and it was extremely helpful in my research. Rapport has a writing style that instantly enthrals you, I had trouble putting it down! If you are still having trouble deciding, listen to In Our Time, 1848, year of revolution, on radio bbc 4 (You can listen online). He mentions the topic and debates with some other historians about its origins.I would definitely buy this, even if the topic isn't your intended area of study. It is extremely interesting!

A very well pieced book using a range of first hand sources giving an outsider a proper 'participation observation' feel of the revolutions. Lucid in prose, one of the most under-rated years in history is re-evaluated from a mainly European perspective. Rapport is an incredible academic, an expert on modern French history and revolution- this clearly shows in the book. For a better background before you start reading, I'd recommend listening to his contributions to podcasts i.e. 'Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1848 Revolutions', and 'Have Your Say', No. 60, BBC World Service,16 November 2011.

Book corresponds to description.

"1848: The Year of Revolution" is a wonderful introduction to the Revolutions of the years 1848 and 1848, touching on all of the social, political, and military events in the period. While the book itself is masterfully written in engaging prose, the main draw-back in the book is the fact that it attempts to cover so much in a single book, and thus cannot devote itself to exploring any of the revolutions in depth. While details abound, and I cannot promote the book enough for introductory students of the era, for those interested in learning about one particular revolution during the time, I would recommend reading first this book to gain an understanding of the broad strokes, and then reading a specialty work on the specific revolution in question.