A meditation on the 1848 chapter of Harold James's "Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises that Shaped Globalization". I really wish he had written "Seven Crashes" before I published "Slouching Towards...
One decision by Napoleon III is not of much import economically, but was revolutionary for art history, was his approval of the Salon des Refusés, which allowed the Impressionists to publicly exhibit their paintings for the first time.
Reminds me of Acemoglu's Model of Elite Accommodation, where décision-makers protect élites from themselves by keeping the terrible just below the torches and pitchforks threshold
Rick Steves noted that when the Roman Empire fell, the emperor became the Pope, and the Senators became the bishops, and Italy continued on. Facil, but very funny.
Wow. Struggling to digest such a large theme through all the particularities!
In recent years I have found myself trying to tease out the related, and inextricably woven, threads involving the immigration of my husband’s ancestor from Germany/Prussia to America in 1881: the conundrum which I refer to in my mind as “Finding Henry.”
(My own great grandparents’ emigration from Norway, while harrowing, is a blindingly simple affair.)
The specifics: Heinrich Matz, born in the Bavarian section of the Alsace Palatinate in 1859 to parents who, as it goes, had gone through the whole Germany/Prussian/Austrian/Franco circa 1848 reorganizations. Heinrich for some reason, moved alone as a young man to the province of Posen where relatives had been earlier settled-in farmers. He was Reformed, so his family of origin had been through some Catholic-Protestant skirmishes.
He emigrated alone to the US in his early 20s, married a young fellow passenger from the German-Poland border area. destination was Wells, in southern Minnesota where some earlier distant Matz relatives had already settled. He worked on a relative’s farm but soon got his own land but died of a tumor soon after of a tumor leaving a wife and two infants behind. His widow remarried someone mutual friends knew of who needed a wife and moved away.
When Henry’s infant son grew up, he found his way back to Wells and worked as a farm laborer before marrying and re-settling there. His only sister had already been taken in by an aunt in a nearby community.
And that’s all we know. So much history and religion and economics and international politics involved. What a complicated time and place!
Thank you for sharing this. Threading family history through the web of the contemporaneous social, political, and economic factors is fascinating. It puts me in their shoes.
A superb riff on 1848 and its aftermath. You are, first and foremost, a wonderful historian.
One decision by Napoleon III is not of much import economically, but was revolutionary for art history, was his approval of the Salon des Refusés, which allowed the Impressionists to publicly exhibit their paintings for the first time.
Allen kamp
And he gave us margarine ... but that is more in line with the above.
Reminds me of Acemoglu's Model of Elite Accommodation, where décision-makers protect élites from themselves by keeping the terrible just below the torches and pitchforks threshold
The 1848 revolution is undertaught. I think it disturbs a lot of people.
Well I don't know for what purpose you are drafting this, but so far it looks like a pretty good essay!
Rick Steves noted that when the Roman Empire fell, the emperor became the Pope, and the Senators became the bishops, and Italy continued on. Facil, but very funny.
Wow. Struggling to digest such a large theme through all the particularities!
In recent years I have found myself trying to tease out the related, and inextricably woven, threads involving the immigration of my husband’s ancestor from Germany/Prussia to America in 1881: the conundrum which I refer to in my mind as “Finding Henry.”
(My own great grandparents’ emigration from Norway, while harrowing, is a blindingly simple affair.)
The specifics: Heinrich Matz, born in the Bavarian section of the Alsace Palatinate in 1859 to parents who, as it goes, had gone through the whole Germany/Prussian/Austrian/Franco circa 1848 reorganizations. Heinrich for some reason, moved alone as a young man to the province of Posen where relatives had been earlier settled-in farmers. He was Reformed, so his family of origin had been through some Catholic-Protestant skirmishes.
He emigrated alone to the US in his early 20s, married a young fellow passenger from the German-Poland border area. destination was Wells, in southern Minnesota where some earlier distant Matz relatives had already settled. He worked on a relative’s farm but soon got his own land but died of a tumor soon after of a tumor leaving a wife and two infants behind. His widow remarried someone mutual friends knew of who needed a wife and moved away.
When Henry’s infant son grew up, he found his way back to Wells and worked as a farm laborer before marrying and re-settling there. His only sister had already been taken in by an aunt in a nearby community.
And that’s all we know. So much history and religion and economics and international politics involved. What a complicated time and place!
Thank you for sharing this. Threading family history through the web of the contemporaneous social, political, and economic factors is fascinating. It puts me in their shoes.