Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONaccepting the proletarian orientation, it grew in strength. The International,as an organization and as a song, was to become an integralpart of socialist movements later in the century.One accidental factor which reinforced the internationalism of1830-48 was exile. Most political militants of the continental left wereexpatriates for some time, many for decades, congregating in therelatively few zones of refuge or asylum: France, Switzerland, to alesser extent Britain and Belgium. (The Americas were too far fortemporary political emigration, though they attracted some.) Thelargest contingent of such exiles was that of the great Polish emigrationof between five and six thousand, 18 driven from their country by thedefeat of 1831, the next largest the Italian and German (both reinforcedby the important non-political emigre or locally settled communitiesof their nationalities in other countries). By the 1840s a small colonyof Russian intellectuals of wealth had also absorbed Western revolutionaryideas on study tours abroad or sought an atmosphere morecongenial than that of Nicholas Fs combination of the dungeon and thedrill-square. Students and wealthy residents from small or backwardcountries were also to be found in the two cities which formed thecultural suns of Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Levant: Parisand, a long way after, Vienna.In the centres of refuge the emigres organized, argued, quarrelled,frequented and denounced one another, and planned the liberation oftheir countries, or in the meantime that of other countries. The Polesand to a lesser extent the Italians (Garibaldi in exile fought for theliberty of various Latin American countries) became in effect internationalcorps of revolutionary militants. No rising or war of liberationanywhere in Europe between 1831 and 1871 was to be complete withoutits contingent of Polish military experts or fighters; not even (it hasbeen held) the only armed rising in Britain during the Chartist period,in 1839. However, they were not the only ones. A fairly typicalexpatriate liberator of peoples, Harro Harring of (as he claimed)Denmark, successively fought for Greece (in 1821), for Poland (in1830-1), as member of Maz^ini's Young Germany, Toung Italy and thesomewhat more shadowy Young Scandinavia, across the oceans in thestruggle for a projected United States of Latin America and in NewYork, before returning for the 1848 Revolution; meanwhile publishingworks with such titles as 'The Peoples', 'Drops of Blood', 'Words ofa Man' and 'Poetry of a Scandinavian'.** He was unlucky enough to attract the hostility of Marx, who spared some of his formidablegifts of satirical invective to preserve him for posterity in his Die Grossen Manner desExits (Marx-Engels Werke, Berlin i960, vol. 8, 292-8).130