What was the legacy of the 1848 revolutions?
This is the start of the part of an article dealing with the legacy In the post-revolutionary decade after 1848, little had visibly changed, and some historians consider the revolutions a failure, given the seeming lack of permanent structural changes. On the other hand, both Germany and Italy achieved political unification over the next two decades, and there were a few immediate successes for some revolutionary movements, notably in the Habsburg lands. Austria and Prussia eliminated feudalism by 1850, improving the lot of the peasants. European middle classes made political and economic gains over the next twenty years; France retained universal male suffrage. Russia would later free the serfs on February 19, 1861. The Habsburgs finally had to give the Hungarians more self-determination in the Ausgleich of 1867, although this in itself resulted only in the rule of autocratic Magyars in Hungary instead of autocratic Germans. But in 1848, the revolutionaries were idealistic and divided
