The Revolutions of 1848, like those of 1830, proclaimed the fundamental freedoms and the right to universal suffrage which still remain today the privilege of a minority of the world's people. Socially, they set free the peasants of central Europe more than half a century after the Great Revolution; and, looking forward a century, they demanded the 'right to work' for those workers who are still no more than the labourers of times past. Nationally, they sought to emancipate in an atmosphere of fraternity, the subject peoples — which was one of the aims of the treaties of 1919 and 1920 — but they really set free the explosive forces of nationalism, forces which do not seem ready even yet to die down.
Complex and contradictory, these revolutions of 1848 pose problems of interpretation. The author shows the transformations which, in various societies, the ideologies originating in the late eighteenth century had undergone. He stresses the very modern character of the problems posed by 1848. These revolutions began with the fall of such men as Louis Philippe and Metternich, but they ended with the triumph of the spirit of the Ancien Régime
Jean Sigmann is a French historian who specializes in the political history of central Europe He has taught this subject at the University of Strasbourg, and also in secondary schools, as well as undertaking research for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. At present he is an inspector of history teachers in secondary schools in northern France, on behalf of the French Academy.