The Wrong Revolution: French Republicanism in 1848

Universal Suffrage as Counter‐Revolution? Electoral Mobilisation under the Second Republic in France, 1848–1851

“…5 However, a more recent account has suggested that republican leaders themselves were to blame, for they were mostly urban inhabitants who had little understanding of conditions in the countryside: "theirs was the wrong revolution". 6 Few, if any, partisans of the new regime were properly prepared for the great leap in the dark that universal male suffrage represented and what they failed to recognise was that the electoral system itself was flawed, ill-adapted to an inexperienced electorate. The essay that follows will explore the way in which elections took place -the act of voting, the absence of declared candidates and the lack of effective communication -as the real causes of disappointment and disillusion for republicans in 1848.…”