1848: Year of Revolution
Mike Rapport
The word “revolution” suggests not just a turning upside-down but a cycle, and in the case of the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848 that seems particularly apt. Mike Rapport suggests the same connection himself (though he doesn’t make it explicit) in his association of the different phases of the revolutions with the seasons – from the springtime of peoples, through the “Red” summer and counter-revolutionary autumn, to the Indian summer of 1849. After the barricades had all come down and the smoke had cleared, Europe failed to change course and in many cases found itself moving backward. The narrative gets a bit sticky with details in this overview, but Rapport does a good job summarizing the different revolutionary theatres and drawing fair and appropriate (though depressing) conclusions.
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