There are two powerful images evoked by the waves of revolutions that broke across Europe in 1848. The first is of ‘the springtime of the peoples’, when scores of popular insurrections overturned the conservative Metternich system of a balance of power between monarchical regimes that had ruled the continent since the overthrow of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815. In France the core demand was popular democracy. Elsewhere, demands for self-determination were linked to dreams of national unity in Germany and Italy, and further to the east to the desire for independence from the Austrian and Russian empires.
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