The Great Illusion: blueprints of collaboration between revolutions in Italy and Germany (1848)

In April 1848, a proclamation of friendship to the Germans sent by the Provisional Government of Milan to the Fünfzigerausschuss (Committee of Fifty) in Frankfurt was rejected by the latter, creating widespread outrage in Italy. Concurrently, a parallel controversy over the possession of South Tyrol arose between the two revolutions. This article provides an exploratory analysis of these two episodes, examining the role they played in shaping relations between the two revolutions, and in influencing the image Italians had of the revolution in Germany. Shedding light on an episode until now overlooked by historiography, this article seeks to contribute to the salient debate on the peculiar relationship between internationalist ideals and nationalist claims during the 1848 revolution. It argues that the disillusioning impact on revolutionary audiences of specific ‘episodes of friction’, such as those examined in this article,was greater than the ‘natural convergence of goals’ of the various national revolutions in 1848.

The origins of the negative historical representations of burghers in Hungary

Hungarian historiography needs to review its negative representation of towns and burghers typical of the first half of nineteenth-century Hungary, as Vera Bácskai, a major figure of Hungarian urban history suggested in a paradigmatic paper. Starting from her statements, this article examines the historical narratives of secondary school textbooks and wider historical syntheses of Hungarian history published in the age of Austria-Hungary (1867–1918). The author shows that the burghers’ negative image was rooted in the political fights prior to the 1848 Revolution and the emergence of modern nationalism.

Untranslatable: Gottfried Kinkel, Kulturgeschichte, and British Art Historiography

In 1934, Edgar Wind claimed there was no English equivalent for the word “kulturwissenschaftlich” and the method it denoted: it was untranslatable. Although German art history had been widely read in England since Victorian times, certain methods, as well as the discipline itself, were only hesitantly received. This article focuses on a decisive moment in this entangled history—an attempt to establish in Britain both art history as an academic discipline and a cultural-historical approach to the subject. The key figure is the dashing art historian Gottfried Kinkel, a close friend of Jacob Burckhardt (and archenemy of Karl Marx), who fled Germany after the 1848 revolution. In 1853, he gave the firstever university lecture in art history in England, the manuscripts of which were recently discovered. Kinkel’s case is a prime example of both a socio-historical approach to art history in Victorian times and an exile’s only partially successful attempt to transmit his methodology to a new audience.

Data on the Egyptian Collection of the National Museum of Transylvanian History. The contribution of Baron Balázs Orbán to the creation of the Egyptian Collection of the Cluj History Museum

"This paper aims to highlight the contribution of the famous Hungarian historian and ethnographer of Szekler origin Balázs Orbán, born in the village of Polonița, near Odorheiu Secuiesc, to the establishment of the Egyptian Collection of the Cluj History Museum, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Baron Balázs Orbán is best known for his main work, A Székelyföld leírása, published between 1868 and 1873. Its six volumes represent a genuine encyclopedia of the region. Balázs Orbán was a prominent intellectual of the era in which he lived – he was a writer, historian, ethnographer, a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy (since 1887), politician in the Independent Party, and a participant in the 1848 revolution. He had an adventurous life, reminiscent of the romantic novels of Mór Jókai or Victor Hugo. To the latter Balázs Orbán was linked by a beautiful friendship, largely due to their shared belief in the liberal and democratic ideas of the era in which they lived. This paper aims to present the years spent by Balázs Orbán in the Orient, as well as the cultural fruits of this period. In his youth, at the age of only 19, the future Hungarian scholar made a trip for several months to the Near East. On this occasion, he acquired a series of valuable Oriental artifacts, which he later donated to the Transylvanian Museum Society, the prestigious Transylvanian cultural institution founded by Count Imre Mikó in 1859, whose collections are preserved today in the heritage of the National Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj‑Napoca."

Az erdélyi románok kisebbségjogi jogállása 1918 előtt

The purpose of the study is to explain the evolution of regulations that resulted in minority rights for Romanians living in Transylvania in the pre-1918 period. The study analyses in detail the advancement of the idea of “ nationalities” (in the meaning of national minorities) in the legislation from the last decade of the 18th century and presents the legal claims of the Transylvanian Romanians against the Habsburg Empire and the Hungarian Parliament. The authors present the Nationalities Act adopted in the 1848 revolution, but left without consequences, and examine the development of laws on minority rights during the legislative period following the Austrian-Hungarian settlement. The article discusses the grand debate on the act on nationalities, which took place in the Hungarian Parliament in 1868, and describes the later assimilation efforts by the majority lawmakers. The authors draw attention to the fact that non-Hungarian nationalities acquired a minority status only after the adoption of the Nationalities Act by the Hungarian state, which became a so-called majority state.

Between Revolt and Loyalty: Students of the Austrian Empire in the 1848 Revolution

Introduction. As a social group with its specific features and motivation, students have been long characterized by their active involvement in social and political unrest. However, the behavioral analysis of students in different historical situations has become an independent research topic as late as in the 1960s. Numerous nuances of student activity remain for that reason unexplored. That is true of the process of student politicization and nationalization in the multi-ethnic Austrian empire during the tumultuous year of 1848. In literature, this issue is either pushed aside or based on an image of a radical “Austrian” student helping proletarians to fight against the regime on barricades. The latter is not relevant in view of the diversity of student sentiments and ideas that were present in the vast Habsburg hereditary lands. Methods and materials. This article analyzes students’ sympathies and actual participation in the rebellious events of 1848 considering the cases of two universities – that of the capital city of Vienna and the university of provincial Innsbruck. The study is based on students’ memoires, pamphlets, letters and newspapers of that time, as well as official documents and appeals by the government. Analysis. The analysis shows that Viennese students had an effective voice in revolutionary events, but their demands were of relatively moderate liberal character, while they largely remained loyal to the emperor. The revolutionary activity of provincial students was much more modest and peaceful than in Vienna. In case of Innsbruck, in particular, an image of a patriotic student fighting with arms for his emperor and fatherland replaced the image of a student fighting for political freedoms. Results. The participation of students in the revolutionary events of 1848 resulted in politicization of the “Austrian” student body and its consolidation as an independent social group.

The Origins of the Interventionist State in France, 1830–1870*

The historiography of the French state’s economic interventionism has focused primarily on the Ancien Régime and the period from the 1850s into the twentieth century. This article argues that, though often overlooked, the French state embarked on a major expansion in the 1830s and 1840s, as government spending on public works grew sharply. Most notably, the government contributed to the financing of railways and urban improvements. Following the 1848 revolution, rising pressure for fiscal rectitude forced a reconfiguration of the interventionist Orleanist state. While the new Bonapartist regime remained committed to public works, it relied more heavily on private finance than its predecessor, benefiting from the ‘great boom’ of the 1850s. Still, private enterprise remained inadequate to sustain public works without the support of public money, particularly once economic expansion began to slow in the 1860s. As a result, government spending on public works continued to rise under the Bonapartists. In this respect, they sustained the conception of an interventionist state developed by the Orleanists.

Las pasiones y los intereses: La educación sentimental de Gustave Flaubert

In Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert carries out a penetrating analysis of the behavior of a whole generation born during the second and third decades of the nineteenth century that will live, at a very young age, the introduction of the Orleanist regime whose bourgeoisie captained the first steps of the industrial boom of France. This generation will likewise attend the 1848 revolution, the birth of the Second Republic and the coup of Louis Napoleon. The world of big business, financial speculation and banking, along with the social response in the form of conspiracy and criticism is reported in this work. Through the story of a young provincial student moving to Paris as background, the passions and interests permanently confronted on the stage of the mid-nineteenth century France are collected.