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Western Civilization · Chapter 11

Build a Coalition: The Revolutions of 1848

In the spring of 1848 revolution swept some fifty European states, and by mid-1849 nearly all of it had been reversed. The reason was not that kings were strong — Metternich fled to England — but that the revolutionaries wanted incompatible things. Assemble a programme from eleven demands that were actually on the table, watch four constituencies rise and fall, then run the year.

Your programme

Every demand below was made somewhere in Europe in 1848. Each one gains you a constituency and costs you another — that is the whole problem of the year.

Try a historical programme, or build your own and see whether you can hold a majority coalition together without conceding to the old order.

Who is still on the barricades?

Ideologies your programme draws on

Run the year

Choose your demands, then run the year to see how far your revolution gets and which historical episode it resembles.