The European crises that culminated in 1848 were perhaps the clearest coincidence of "global" economic and political instability of which we know. That year witnessed a revolutionary conflagration of continental proportions. In sheer scope it was unprecedented, and even a century and a half later we have not seen its equal. The three years preceding this outburst had been marked by an economic crisis that though not without precedent, caused acute distress through most of Europe. The nature and significance of the connection between this crisis and these social movements has been the object of considerable speculation. In a passage from "The Class Struggles in France," Marx alluded to the systemic character of the crisis. He attributed the revolutionary eruptions to two "economic world events": the potato blight and crop failures of 1845-1846 and the industrial crisis in England. He criticized the French revolutionaries' belief that they could "consummate a proletarian revolution within the national walls of France," for they thus ignored that "French production relations are conditioned by the foreign trade of France, by her position on the world market and the laws thereof." Specificaily, Marx asked "How was France to break [the web of its relations of production] without a European revolutionary war, which would strike back at the despot of the world market, England? "~ My point in citing the views of Marx is not to offer them as a satisfactory explanation of the events of 1848; we will see that here, as elsewhere, his views are in need of substantial amendment and revision in the light of subsequent empirical research. They represent, however, the most apt example of the influence those events have exerted on our understanding of revolutionary social movements. Through the writings of Marx and others, the surge of activity that took place in that year ultimately became not just an example of the convergence of economic crisis and revolutionary ferment but the singular case on which much of the relevant theory, old and new, has been based.