Abstract
The 1830 revolution was the product of the coincidence of a political conflict between the fast-growing liberal majority in parliament and the ultraroyalist Polignac government on the one hand, and an economic crisis, which made Paris volatile and disturbed the provinces on the other. Contemporary officials and most subsequent historians assumed that the growth of liberal opposition and popular unrest were linked with the economic depression, but this hypothesis has received little detailed investigation. What part did the economic crisis play in the outbreak of the 1830 revolution? Restoration prefects believed that liberalism was at least as much a socioeconomic as a political phenomenon and that the industrial and commercial middle class was almost exclusively liberal. Karl Marx later developed an influential hypothesis of revolution, in which the bourgeoisie was crucial to both 1830 and 1848.1 Subsequently it has been assumed, by both his supporters and his critics, that economic disaster is an essential component of any respectable revolution.
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Notes
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© 1991 Pamela M. Pilbeam
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Pilbeam, P.M. (1991). The Economic Crisis and the Revolution. In: The 1830 Revolution in France. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376861_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230376861_3
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