The Prague Uprising of 1848 was part of the powerful series of revolutions that shook practically the entire European Continent as the middle classes and urban and rural workers pressed against the rule of aristocrats and monarchs. Czech Marxist historian Josef Polisensky analyzes the general turmoil of revolutionary thought and action in Europe and then focuses on the specific case of the Prague Uprising. By using previously untouched sources—the records of hundreds of noble houses that came under the control of the Czech Archival Administration after World War II—Polisensky is able to show how those of the old social establishment fought the participants in the Uprising and temporarily restored the rule of the aristocracy. With an excellent sense for the dramatic and a thorough knowledge of place, Polisensky tells us who fought and died on the streets of Prague. With the conceptual framework of class conflict and a broad perspective on European events, he proposes reasons for the failure of the Prague Uprising in contrast to other successful revolutions. Aristocrats and the Crowd is the last of Polisensky's trilogy of studies on Czech society and revolution. In The Thirty Years' War and the European Crisis of the Seventeenth Century and Napoleon and the Heart of Europe, Polisensky explored the effects of other European conflicts on Czech society. Aristocrats and the Crowd describes, in his words, "the revolutionary springtime which eventually arrived, full of twists, in Bohemia itself."

A student textbook designed to introduce, in an accessible manner, all the principal themes and problems of this period in European history.

The revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848 marked a turning-point in the history of political and social thought. They raised questions of democracy, nationhood, freedom and social cohesion that have remained among the key issues of modern politics, and still help to define the major ideological currents - liberalism, socialism, republicanism, anarchism, conservatism - in which these questions continue to be debated today. This collection of essays by internationally prominent historians of political thought examines the 1848 Revolutions in a pan-European perspective, and offers research on questions of state power, nationality, religion, the economy, poverty, labour, and freedom. Even where the revolutionary movements failed to achieve their explicit objectives of transforming the state and social relations, they set the agenda for subsequent regimes, and contributed to the shaping of modern European thought and institutions.

"William McCagg has done a great service for scholarship—and for Habsburg scholarship in particular—through his book. Scholars are in his debt." —History of European Ideas " . . . strongly recommended to those interested in either Jewish or Habsburg history." —American Historical Review " . . . McCagg tells a fascinating story with expert knowledge, with the sure eye and sound judgment of the experienced historian . . . " —Midstream " . . . exceptionally fine research and the time frame of the study which make it quite remarkable and original." —German Politics & Society "William McCagg brings out the extent to which Jews were divided not only as Jews, but also as citizens of Austro-Hungary . . . McCagg writes perceptively of Kafka's predicament as a German-speaking Jew in Prague, living through the Czech nationalist revival . . . " —New York Review of Books Drawing on a wide variety of European sources, McCagg has produced the first history of this important but often forgotten community to be written since the nineteenth century.

Czech, German, and Noble examines the intellectual ideas and political challenges that inspired patriotic activity among the Bohemian nobility, the infusion of national identity into public and institutional life, and the role of the nobility in crafting and supporting the national ideal within Habsburg Bohemia. Patriotic aristocrats created the visible and public institutional framework that cultivated national sentiment and provided the national movement with a degree of intellectual and social legitimacy. The book argues that the mutating identity of the aristocracy was tied both to insecurity and to a belief in the power of science to address social problems, commitment to the ideals of enlightenment as well as individual and social improvement, and profound confidence that progress was inevitable and that intellectual achievement would save society. The aristocrats who helped create, endow and nationalize institutions were a critical component of the public sphere and necessary for the nationalization of public life overall. The book explores the myriad reasons for aristocratic participation in new or nationalized institutions, the fundamental changes in legal and social status, new ideas about civic responsibility and political participation, and the hope of reform and fear of revolution. The book examines the sociability within and creation of nascent national institutions that incorporated fundamentally new ways of thinking about community, culture, competition, and status. The argument, that class mattered to the degree that it was irrelevant, intersects with several important historical questions beyond theories of nationalism, including debates about modernization and the longevity of aristocratic power, the nature of the public sphere and class, and the measurable impact of science and intellectual movements on social and political life.

The Habsburg province of Moravia straddled a complicated linguistic, cultural, and national space, where German, Slavic, and Jewish spheres overlapped, intermingled, and sometimes clashed. Situated in the heart of Central Europe, Moravia was exposed to major Jewish movements from the East and West, including Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), Hasidism, and religious reform. Moravia's rooted and thriving rabbinic culture helped moderate these movements and, in the case of Hasidism, keep it at bay. During the Revolution of 1848, Moravia's Jews took an active part in the prolonged and ultimately successful struggle for Jewish emancipation in the Habsburg lands. The revolution ushered in a new age of freedom, but it also precipitated demographic, financial, and social transformations, disrupting entrenched patterns that had characterized Moravian Jewish life since the Middle Ages. These changes emerged precisely when the Czech-German conflict began to dominate public life, throwing Moravia's Jews into the middle of the increasingly virulent nationality conflict. For some, a cautious embrace of Zionism represented a way out of this conflict, but it also represented a continuation of Moravian Jewry's distinctive role as mediator—and often tamer—of the major ideological movements that pervaded Central Europe in the Age of Emancipation.