ABSTRACT
If governments and their security forces were major factors in the crises of 1830, they were not the only ones. There were at least two other groups contending for power on the other side. It is important to ask exactly who they were and why they participated in the revolutionary movements of those years. Participation, of course, can mean at least two things, for there is an obvious difference between active leadership on the one hand, and some more passive form of popular support on the other. To a large extent, the people who took these respective roles in 1830 came from different social groups, but the identification of the middle classes with the leaders and the lower classes with the led is not exact. In any case, it is in the interrelationships of the two that the potency of the movements of 1830 is really to be found. Furthermore, classes as such did not act in 1830, and even less did people act from self-conscious class motivations. Social concerns and interests helped to fuel political and other forms of protest, but other motives also had their part to play. People did not always participate in revolution with clearly defined expectations of what might result. Participants were not all to be rewarded. Opposition contention for power in 1830 cannot be understood in simple and anachronistic economic terms.
