“We are on a stormy sea, without a shore”, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville to a childhood friend in the midst of the 1848 revolutions. “The shore is so far away, so unknown,” he added, “that our lives and perhaps the lives of those who follow will pass before we set foot and settle on it.” Though the French aristocrat had prophetically warned about a possible revolution less than a month before the February events, he felt confused about their historical meaning. But he correctly predicted the truth about what Eric Hobsbawm described as the “first and last” revolution that would unfold at the European scale and be experienced as such. More than a straightforward rebellion or even a coordinated uprising, 1848 marked a fundamental transition in the way we conduct politics.
