Beyond the Barricades

Abstract Beyond the Barricades is an original study of government after the 1848–9 revolutions. It focuses on a number of conservative ministers in Prussia who sought to learn lessons from their experiences of upheaval and introduce a wave of reforming activity in the 1850s. Using extensive primary research, the work explores Prussia’s entry into the constitutional age, charting initiatives to recast criminal justice, agriculture, industry, communications, urban life, and press management. The reforms of the 1850s strengthened state contact with the Prussian population, making this a classic episode of state-building. But Beyond the Barricades seeks to go further. It makes a case for taking notice of government activity at this particular juncture because the measures endorsed by conservative statesmen in the 1850s were designed to remove the feudal intermediaries that had lingered so long, albeit in significantly weakened forms, into the nineteenth century. In other words, this book recasts the post-revolutionary period as one in which an old world is increasingly replaced with a new one, pivotal to the making of modern Prussia and, ultimately, modern Germany.