Ideální představy o ústavě, parlamentarismu a zástupcích lidu v revolučním roce 1848/1849

• Authors: Luboš Velek

Title variants

EN

IDEAL NOTIONS OF CONSTITUTION, PARLIAMENT-BASED POLITICAL SYSTEM AND PEOPLE’S REPRESENTATIVES IN THE REVOLUTION OF 1848/1849

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The Czech Lands were economically the most developed parts of the Austrian Monarchy as early as the mid-19th century. In spite of that, however, the country still remained more or less agrarian and was just entering the industrialization period. Most population lived in the country and even the towns and cities, except Prague, exhibited pure provincial features. The population of the Czech Lands, i.e., Bohemia and Moravia, was an ethnic mixture of Czechs and Bohemian Germans without any major ethnic problems. The Revolution of 1848/49 constituted a culmination of the ongoing Czech emancipation process. The Czechs were able, following their previous achievements in the cultural area, to present a political program of their own. They were headed by a new political elite coming mainly from among the lower Czech intelligentsia and leaning on Czech peasants whose supports they could gain by requiring an abolition of serfdom and a transfer of manorial land to peasants. The exemption of peasants from servitude was a driving force of the revolutionary movement in the Bohemian Lands that agitated the whole country like never before and never after. This produced contemporary notions of the importance and role of people’s “representatives” in the system of constitutional monarchy. In the absolutist Habsburg Monarchy there was not only a lack of controversial topics, but also of competent forums to discuss them. The changes needed could be introduced by replacing the absolutist monarchy with a system of constitutional monarchy. However, the revolution year 1848/49 was rather a “spring of nations” than a year introducing the civil rights and freedoms. Thus, the revolutionary movement in the Bohemian Lands was a bright mixture of topics, notions and requirements, from political liberalization, through abolition of serfdom and transfer of manorial land to peasants, to national and political emancipation of different ethnic entities. While in the pre-March period the absolutist state tolerated to some extent the restrained emancipation of its nationalities, after the Revolution it was unable to efficiently intervene and only passively watched the beginning national disintegration of the Habsburg Empire.

Keywords

EN

HISTORY; 19TH CENTURY; REVOLUTION OF 1848–1849; BOHEMIAN LANDS; CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Moderní dějiny: sborník k dějinám 19. a 20. století (Modern History: Studies into 19th and 20th century history)
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 13-34

Contributors

author

Luboš Velek

• Masarykův ústav a Archiv Akademie věd České republiky, Gabčíkova 2362/10, 182 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic