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| This image shows the barricade the French citizens made during the French Revolution of 1848. http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/2-france-revolution-1848-granger.jpg |
Link to our Survey Monkey on the French Revolution of 1848: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MJMFW6J
Were the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 really failures as many historians have concluded? To answer this question, my history class split into five groups, and each group analyzed a revolution from that time period. Next, each group made a survey monkey for their revolution. A survey monkey is a type of survey you create on an electronic device, which can be taken by anyone else. After reading documents on the revolutions, we took the surveys. Finally we ranked each revolution on how good or bad it was. My classmates learned from my group's Survey Monkey well because most oft the answers were correct, as shown in the images below. Historians have concluded that these revolutions were all complete failures, but most of them weren't. I think that the historians were partially wrong, because the revolts were partially successful, and many people that started them got some of the rights they were asking for.
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| 80% of my classmates identified the main idea in our first primary source, after reading an article on the revolution. |
My group studied and created a survey monkey on the French Revolution of 1848. During this revolution, lower and middle class liberals revolted against the french government because they wanted political, economic, and social reforms. In the first part of the revolution, February Days, King Louis Philippe created more jobs for the poor, but during the second part, June Days, the upper and middle classes took control and got rid of the working class's jobs. Louis Philippe gave up his throne and the French people voted for a president. A primary source written by Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, describes the barricades made by the french people to defend themselves from the government. It says, "You saw there, in chaos full of despair, rafters from roofs, patches from garrets with their wall paper, window sashes with all their glass planted in the rubbish, ..." The end results were mixed: the number of citizens that could vote increased from 200,000 to 9 million, but new president Louis Napoleon declared himself emperor and became too controlling. Although the economy grew during Louis Napoleon's reign and the number of voters increased, France was still under a monarchy. Another primary source, written by the National Assembly of France, says that the people of France wanted to become united and not have to live under a monarchy any more: "Citizens: royalty, under whatever form, is abolished; no more legitimism, no more Bonapartism, no regency." This goal happened because Louis Napoleon became emperor. The French revolution of 1848 was not a failure as historians have said, because the results were fairly neutral.
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| About 70% of my class answered that the middle class liberals wanted moderate political reforms during the French Revolution of 1848. |
The revolutions of 1830 and 1848 were the Decembrist Revolt, the French Revolution of 1830, the French Revolution of 1848, the Frankfurt Assembly, and the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and only the first one was a complete failure. The Decembrist Revolt was a failure because the peasants of Russia wanted more rights and a new constitution, but didn't receive either of them. Besides this, all the other revolutions were classified as neutral/failure, neutral, or neutral/success. For example, during the Frankfurt Assembly, workers wanted national unity for Germany and liberal reforms, and the results were not a complete failure. The citizens kept trying to get the reforms, and almost succeed, but the king turned them down in the end because he was a conservative. Also, in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, Hungarian nationalists wanted an independent government, the end of serfdom, and a constitution to protect basic rights. The government agreed to these changes because they were overwhelmed, but they eventually returned to the way they were before. Although the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 weren't really successes, the revolters received some of their rights. Historians who believe that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 are total failures are wrong because the revolutions inspired future revolutionists to change the previous revolt techniques, which helped the future revolutions succeeded.
Primary Source Citations:
1848: Hugo's Description of the Barricade Excerpt from Les Miserables, Victor Hugo 1862
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/la/1848barricade.html
Documents of the Revolution of 1848 in France J. H. Robinson, ed., Readings in European History (Boston: Ginn, 1906), 2: 559-562 Hanover Historical Texts Project
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