A Sense of a European Present and its Passing during the Revolutions of 1848

Abstract

This article explores the temporality of revolution in 1848. It argues that what united the various revolutionary movements of that year was a sense of participating in a common European ‘present’, in which old imperial hierarchies collapsed and every cause and people seemed to exist in the same historical moment. The significance of that sense of the present was visible across the continent, but it was of greatest significance in the revolutionary theatres beyond the core imperial centres, and it was those places that would suffer first when that present passed. Too much ‘history’ was taking place at once, and as events in different settings followed their own particular courses, minds turned away from a European project. As European unity faltered, it was the representatives of imperial counter-revolution who demonstrated their ability to think strategically on a continent-wide level. They defeated the various movements, which had promised a better European present, and deferred improvements to the future. By doing so, they returned the peoples of the continent to their own particular – rather than common European – ‘nows’.