The mid-nineteenth-century crisis in France and England

Abstract

The European crises that culminated in 1848 were perhaps the clearest coincidence of "global" economic and political instability of which we know. That year witnessed a revolutionary conflagration of continental proportions. In sheer scope it was unprecedented, and even a century and a half later we have not seen its equal. The three years preceding this outburst had been marked by an economic crisis that though not without precedent, caused acute distress through most of Europe. The nature and significance of the connection between this crisis and these social movements has been the