ABSTRACT
The question of why there were revolutions and political changes in Europe in 1830 has all too often been answered in terms of the effects of the July crisis in Paris. One reputable textbook speaks for many when it says that ‘the immediate effect of the three-day Parisian revolution of 1830 was to set off a series of similar explosions throughout Europe’. Some observers have made the same claim in even more extreme terms, arguing that the moments of 1830 were quite deliberately caused by the French to advance their own interests. This is far too simplistic to be convincing: on the one hand, evidence for French involvement is lacking; while, on the other, it is hardly likely that people would revolt simply because the Parisians had done so. In fact their willingness to revolt can only really be explained by the situations in which they found themselves, which were in turn the products of earlier events and problems. The causes of 1830, indeed, lie deep in the development of Europe over preceding generations, and not in the work of a few French or other conspirators.
