AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Explain what the Concert of Europe was and how it differed from the Congress of Vienna settlement
- Identify the main causes of the Revolutions of 1848, including liberal, nationalist, and economic pressures
- Understand why the revolutions challenged the post-1815 conservative order
- Analyse why most revolutions failed in the short term despite their wide spread
- Judge the extent to which 1848 broke, weakened, or exposed the limits of the Concert system
- Use France, the Habsburg Empire, the German states, and Italy as specific evidence in AP-style answers

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand how the Revolutions of 1848 affected the post-Napoleonic order, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that the **Congress of Vienna (1814–1815)** created a conservative settlement based on legitimacy and balance of power
- Identify the **Concert of Europe** as the later system of great-power cooperation used to preserve that settlement
- Explain how **liberalism**, **nationalism**, and economic hardship in the **hungry forties** helped trigger the revolutions of **1848**
- Understand why **Metternich’s fall in Vienna in March 1848** symbolised a major blow to the conservative order
- Describe the creation of the **French Second Republic**, the **June Days**, and the division between liberals and workers
- Explain why the **Frankfurt Assembly (1848–1849)** failed to unify Germany
- Understand how revolts in **Italy** and **Hungary** challenged Austrian power but were later suppressed
- Judge the extent to which 1848 undermined rather than immediately destroyed the Concert system

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. What was the difference between the Congress of Vienna settlement and the Concert of Europe?
2. Why did the Revolutions of 1848 pose such a serious threat to Metternich’s system?
3. Why did the Frankfurt Assembly fail even though German nationalism was strong?
4. How did the June Days in France reveal divisions within the revolutionary camp?
5. To what extent did 1848 end the Concert of Europe?

## Introduction

The Revolutions of **1848** were one of the biggest political shocks in nineteenth-century Europe. They spread across **France**, the **German states**, the **Italian states**, and the **Habsburg Empire**, and they seemed for a moment to overturn the conservative order built after Napoleon’s defeat. For AP European History, the key issue is not just what happened in each country, but what these revolts showed about the weakness of the post-1815 system.

A strong answer does not claim that 1848 instantly erased all conservative power. That is too simple. Most revolutions were crushed. But 1848 still mattered because it exposed how fragile the old order had become. The Concert of Europe could still restore order, but it increasingly did so through coercion, division, and temporary fixes rather than shared confidence.

> **Key Term: Concert of Europe**
> The post-1815 system of great-power consultation and cooperation designed to preserve the Vienna settlement, maintain stability, and contain revolution.

### What the Concert system was supposed to do

To understand why 1848 mattered, you first need a clear picture of the system it challenged. After Napoleon’s defeat, the great powers met at the **Congress of Vienna** in **1814–1815**. Their aim was to restore dynastic legitimacy, redraw borders, and stop any one state from dominating Europe again.

But students often blur two things together:

> **Key Term: Congress of Vienna**
> The diplomatic meeting of 1814–1815 that created the post-Napoleonic territorial and political settlement in Europe.
>
> **Key Term: Vienna settlement**
> The agreements made at Vienna to restore order, strengthen conservative governments, and maintain a balance of power.

The **Vienna settlement** was the actual set of agreements. The **Concert of Europe** was the method used afterward to defend those agreements. That method relied on the great powers consulting with one another and, when necessary, intervening against revolution. Metternich was central to this system because Austria sat at the heart of Europe and feared both liberalism and nationalism.

> **Key Term: Metternich system**
> The conservative order associated with Klemens von Metternich, marked by censorship, police surveillance, and opposition to liberal and nationalist movements.

The system worked for a time because many rulers shared the same fears. They used censorship, secret police, and congresses such as **Troppau (1820)**, **Laibach (1821)**, and **Verona (1822)** to contain unrest. The **Carlsbad Decrees (1819)** suppressed nationalist and liberal activity in the German Confederation. On paper, this looked strong.

The weakness was deeper. The system depended on the idea that liberalism and nationalism could be contained indefinitely. By the 1840s, that assumption was collapsing.

> **Test Tip:** In an LEQ or DBQ, define the Concert clearly. Examiners like answers that distinguish the diplomatic system from the Vienna settlement itself.

### Why 1848 erupted across Europe

The revolutions did not come from one cause. Strong AP answers use multi-causal reasoning. Three causes matter most: political frustration, nationalism, and economic hardship.

First, many educated middle-class liberals wanted constitutions, civil liberties, and broader political participation. They were tired of censorship and rule from above. In places like France and the German states, they believed governments had blocked reform for too long.

Second, nationalism was spreading. Germans wanted unity. Italians wanted to reduce Austrian dominance. Hungarians, Czechs, and other peoples in the Habsburg Empire wanted autonomy or self-government. Nationalism was especially dangerous for Austria because it ruled over many ethnic groups at once.

> **Key Term: nationalism**
> The belief that a people sharing language, culture, or history should have political loyalty to their nation and often their own state.

Third, the **1840s** were the **hungry forties**. Poor harvests, high food prices, unemployment, and hardship sharpened existing anger. The Irish potato famine was the worst example, but distress was widespread across Europe. Economic suffering turned political frustration into mass unrest.

This combination explains why revolutions spread so quickly in **1848**. They were not centrally coordinated, but they were driven by similar pressures. Different groups often rose for different reasons, yet they all strained the conservative order.

The most important point is this: the Concert system had been built to contain revolution, but by 1848 revolution appeared almost everywhere at once. That alone showed that the old system was no longer secure.

### France and Vienna showed the crisis of the old order

France provided the spark. In **February 1848**, opposition to Louis-Philippe’s July Monarchy exploded after the government banned a reform banquet. Louis-Philippe abdicated, and the **Second Republic** was proclaimed. Universal male suffrage was introduced, which was a dramatic extension of political rights.

> **Key Term: Second Republic**
> The French government established in 1848 after the overthrow of Louis-Philippe, marked by universal male suffrage and deep political division.

But France also showed why the revolutions fractured. Liberals wanted constitutional and political reform. Workers and radicals wanted social and economic change. National Workshops were created to provide jobs, but when they were shut down, Paris workers rose in the **June Days**.

> **Key Term: June Days**
> The workers’ uprising in Paris in June 1848 after the closure of the National Workshops, revealing class conflict within the French Revolution.

The June Days matter because they exposed a split that weakened revolution across Europe: middle-class liberals feared social revolution as much as they feared reaction. Once workers seemed threatening, many liberals preferred order to radical change. This pattern appears again and again in 1848.

At the same time, events in **Vienna** struck at the symbolic centre of the conservative order. In **March 1848**, unrest forced **Metternich** to resign and flee. That was a huge symbolic defeat. If the architect of the post-1815 order could be driven from Vienna, then the old system clearly lacked the authority it once had.

Yet symbolism and survival are not the same. Austria eventually recovered. That is the central subtlety of this topic. The Metternich system lost prestige, but the Habsburg monarchy still retained armies and could exploit divisions among its enemies.

> **Test Tip:** If the question says “to what extent,” avoid absolute claims. A safer judgement is that 1848 seriously weakened and discredited the Concert rather than ending it in one stroke.

### Germany, Italy, and Hungary revealed the limits of liberal nationalism

The **German states** showed both the strength and weakness of liberal nationalism. In **1848–1849**, delegates met in the **Frankfurt Assembly** to create a unified constitutional Germany.

> **Key Term: Frankfurt Assembly**
> The 1848–1849 meeting of German liberals who attempted to create a unified constitutional Germany.

This was important because it showed that German nationalism was real and politically serious. But the Assembly failed. Why?

First, it lacked military power. It could debate constitutions, but it had no army to enforce its decisions. Second, it depended on princes for cooperation. Third, delegates split over whether Germany should include Austria or exclude it. Finally, when they offered the imperial crown to **Frederick William IV of Prussia** in **1849**, he refused it. He would not accept a crown “from the gutter,” meaning from a popular assembly rather than from dynastic authority.

Students often say the Frankfurt Assembly failed because nationalism was weak. That misses the point. Nationalism was strong enough to produce the Assembly. The problem was that liberal nationalism lacked state power.

In **Italy**, revolts in **Milan** and **Venice** and war by **Charles Albert of Piedmont-Sardinia** challenged Austrian rule. These uprisings showed the force of Italian nationalism. But Austrian armies under **Radetzky** defeated Piedmont-Sardinia and restored control.

In **Hungary**, the revolt led by **Lajos Kossuth** achieved major concessions at first. But Hungary’s movement was weakened by ethnic tensions inside the kingdom itself. Croats, Romanians, and others did not automatically support Magyar dominance. Austria then secured **Russian intervention in 1849** to crush Hungary.

This is one of the clearest signs that the old order was weaker than before yet still dangerous. Austria survived not through broad legitimacy, but through force and outside help. That is very different from saying the Concert was healthy. A system that survives only by military repression and emergency cooperation is a system under strain.

### Did 1848 break the Concert system?

The best judgement is that 1848 broke the Concert system in its original form, but did not instantly destroy all conservative rule. That wording is precise and historically defensible.

Why say it broke the system?

First, Metternich’s fall destroyed the authority of the man most associated with post-1815 conservatism. Second, the revolutions showed that liberalism and nationalism could not be permanently bottled up. Third, the revolutions spread so widely that the ideal of stable great-power management looked increasingly unrealistic.

Why not say it completely ended the system in 1848?

Because conservative governments recovered. Austria crushed revolt. Prussia reasserted control. France moved from republican experiment to the presidency of **Louis-Napoleon**, then to the **Second Empire** in **1852**. The old elites and armies still mattered enormously.

So what changed? Before 1848, the system claimed to preserve order through consensus, legitimacy, and controlled intervention. After 1848, order increasingly depended on force, manipulation, and temporary compromises. Nationalism was no longer a side issue. It was becoming the main force reshaping Europe.

This is why later events matter as follow-through, not as separate stories. The **Crimean War (1853–1856)** showed that great-power cooperation had weakened further, especially between Austria and Russia. Later, **Italian** and **German unification** finished the erosion of the Vienna order by replacing the old balance with new nation-states.

> **Key Term: Crimean War**
> The 1853–1856 conflict that further damaged great-power cooperation and showed the continuing breakdown of the post-1815 Concert system.

So 1848 did not instantly end the Concert, but it exposed its limits and made its original conservative assumptions obsolete. The old order survived the shock, yet it survived in a diminished form.

### How to use this in an AP essay

For an LEQ or DBQ, a strong thesis might say:

The Revolutions of 1848 did not immediately destroy the Concert of Europe, since conservative regimes eventually suppressed most uprisings, but they seriously undermined the system by toppling Metternich, exposing the force of liberalism and nationalism, and showing that post-1815 order could now be restored only by coercion.

That works because it includes both short-term failure and long-term significance.

A good structure would be:

- paragraph 1: define the Concert and explain the 1815 context
- paragraph 2: causes of revolution in 1848
- paragraph 3: France and Vienna as symbols of crisis
- paragraph 4: Germany, Italy, and Hungary as evidence of both revolutionary energy and conservative recovery
- conclusion: qualify the judgement and link to Crimean War or unification

What makes this analytical rather than descriptive is the repeated focus on why events mattered for the system as a whole. Do not just retell revolutions country by country. Keep returning to the argument about the limits of the Concert.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Congress of Vienna created the settlement of **1814–1815**, while the Concert of Europe was the later system used to preserve it
- The Metternich system relied on censorship, surveillance, and conservative cooperation against revolution
- The Revolutions of **1848** were driven by liberalism, nationalism, and the economic hardship of the **hungry forties**
- The overthrow of **Louis-Philippe** in France helped trigger wider revolutionary movements across Europe
- The **Second Republic** introduced universal male suffrage but was split by class conflict
- The **June Days** revealed deep tensions between workers and moderate liberals
- **Metternich’s fall in Vienna** symbolised a major blow to the conservative order
- The **Frankfurt Assembly** failed because it lacked military power and princely backing
- Italian and Hungarian revolts challenged Austrian rule but were later crushed by force
- Russian intervention in **1849** helped Austria defeat Hungary, showing conservative survival through coercion
- The revolutions mostly failed in the short term but weakened the legitimacy of the post-1815 order
- The best judgement is that 1848 undermined and exposed the limits of the Concert rather than ending it immediately

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Concert of Europe
- Congress of Vienna
- Vienna settlement
- Metternich system
- nationalism
- Second Republic
- June Days
- Frankfurt Assembly
- Crimean War


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