Revolutions of 1848 The conflict in interests bet Essays

Revolutions of 1848: The conflict in interests between urban middle-class and working class The revolutions throughout 1848 were aimed to politically reform countries across Europe and assure that discrimination based upon social class would be abolished when resolving political issues. Living with the ideology that everyone is treated equally by government no m atter what social class you belong to is something that we today take for granted. Sadly, this was an everyday issue for many European countries. T hroughout this essay I will give evidence to demonstrate how these revolutions drastically failed and that the wo rking class always seemed to be blatantly discriminated against. I will be looking at examples of social discrimination and separation amongst the social classes in countries including Czech Republic and conflict between the upper-class Austrian garrison and the lower class Milanese civilians during the tobacco riot. The first example that I am going to talk about regarding the lack of consideration for the working class involves the Czech Republic, where the liberal organization called for a public meeting at the Saint Vaclav's Baths in order to discuss th e announcement of the revolution. Here, several thousand people turned out, which for a population that was significantly smaller than it is today, was an extremely large and impressive turn out. Less than half of these people in attendance were of the middle-class . This is stated in Mike Rapport's book Year of Revolution' states that "eight hundred of the more 'respectable' demonstrators- young intellectuals, officials, burghers, artisans, almost all of them Czech- were allowed into the baths" These baths were warm and sheltered and were a big upgrade on where the working class attendants would be situated. Rapport then goes on to tell us where the working class would be situated during the meeting: " The excluded workers huddles together in the street, battered by a heavy rain." This description by Rapport puts into perspective just how blatantly unfair the working class were treated in comparison to the middle-class. Furthermore, during this meeting a pe tition announced which was deman ding that more jobs were made available to the middle-class with a suitable wage level where the working class could not steal their jobs by willing to work for substantially less. The petition also called for the labor obligations to be revoked from the working class as the middle-class wanted the working class to have no laws and regulations protecting them when working. Having no labor obligations could mean that work for the working class could become a lot more dangerous and there would perhaps be no certainty of receiving any pay for the work they do. However, why do the middle-class treat the working class with such little to no respect? Well this would all be explained by the revolt in 1844 where the working class drove the middle class out of their jobs causing the middle class to retaliate. In 1844 whilst the industrial revolution was going on the boom in heavy industrial processes was going on. At this time in the industrial revolution , I believe three classes existed , l ower, middle and upper class. The lower-class being the peasants' with minimal to no education and living in extremely poor conditions. The middle-class being the well-educated and hard working with degrees who had jobs such as engineers, lawyers, doctors and craftsman. Then the upper-class or in other words could be described as the elites' who would have priorities including showing off their wealth by wearing expensive fashionable clothing and attending social events with fellow upper-class associates. T he men of the upper-class would typically dress in a three-piece suit with dress pants and dress shoes, whilst the women would wear matching jacket and skirt worn with a high-collared shirt. Simply by briefly describing each class it's obvious to distinguish the differences between them. The gap between each class is large, especially from lower to upper . The upper-class looked down on both the middle and lower, considering both peasants, whilst the middle-class disliked both, the y looked down at the lower-class as worthless and disliked the upper-class as they considered them lazy and people with too much political power. Therefore, when