ABSTRACT
For some historians the rise of the middle class – in terms of economic and political power – is the outstanding consequence of the process of industrialisation and urbanisation in nineteenth-century Europe ( 35 ). The middle class is seen as dynamic, leading the way in the process of industrialisation and commercialisation which eventually eroded aristocratic privilege and the monopoly of power enjoyed by the landed classes. Significantly, the 1848 revolutions are seen as a landmark in this process. Admittedly this is questionable, since the resilience of the landed classes and their persistence in controlling crucial aspects of the state apparatus in central and eastern Europe continued until late into the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, it is appropriate here to examine the middle classes in the decades immediately before 1848 to establish whether their experience of change pushed them into the revolutionary camp, or at least into the party of reform.
