3This attitude underpins the book’s structure, which is organised into four parts. The first one proposes to « déseuropéaniser 1848 » (tellingly, with a question mark in the title). It refuses diffusionist visions –from Europe to the world– and investigates circulations on a more complex and global scale, focusing on non-European contexts, dynamics, and exchanges (as it is done, for instance, by Claire Fredj on Algeria and Sujit Sivasundaram on the Indian Ocean). The second part examines the flows of revolutionary experiences, ideas, and languages, and it brings to light some non-European perspectives on the springtime of the people. For instance, Jorge Myers and Edward Blumenthal focus on some Latin American intellectuals and exiles that saw Europe not as the forerunner of progress but as a backward continent finally moving toward republican institutions. Furthermore, this section provides insights into the worldwide repercussions of the European 1848, as in Paul Pickering’s piece on Oceania and Hélène Quanquin’s one on the reuse of 1848 by the US feminist-abolitionist groups.

4This same approach returns in the third part, devoted to abolitionism –see, for example, Julie Marquet’s essay on the consequences of universal male suffrage and the abolition of slavery on the cast society and work market in the oft-neglected France’s Indian outposts, and Natalia Sobrevilla’s piece on how 1848 catalysed the abolition in the Spanish American republics. Three articles (by Myriam Cottias, Adélaïde Marine-Gougeon, and Jessica Balguy) are dedicated to former enslavers, their mobility, their commitment to imperial projects, and the crucial topic of indemnities. Finally, the fourth section traces the « echos, reverberations, and clues » of 1848 in contexts that, at first glance, were not affected by disorders, as Russia, Walachia, and Brazil (treated, respectively, by Jonathan Beecher, James Morris, and Andre Jockyman Roithmann). Engaging with the case of Cuba, Romy Sánchez points to how, in the Spanish colony, the revolutionary wave triggered police concerns rather than actual conspiracies, and only a few moderate exiles tried to seize the global revolutionary conjuncture to promote reforms or the island’s annexation to the US as a slave state.

5As this quick overview shows, the subject of circulations –and their limits– is addressed with sophistication. In a world « à la fois interconnecté et désynchronisé » (p. 339), news of the European uprisings reached other regions of the world with weeks or months delay, and this « distance temporelle » (p. 43) induced various interpretations and readaptations of ideas and images. Moreover, the volume pays attention to conceptions of emancipation that were alternative to revolutionary and democratic ones, like the « élan messianique » (p. 208) sparked by the election of Pope Pius IX, described by Ignazio Veca.

8Beyond these possible expansions, a broader question remains, which could be distilled into a grammatical issue: singular or plural? Indeed, even if the volume title is Les mondes de 1848 and « la pluralité des mondes de 1848 » is recalled until the last page (p. 343), formulas like « un 1848 global » (p. 19, 43) and « le moment 1848 » (p. 125, 144, 219, 273) appear throughout the text, where one can find references to both « les mondes » (p. 133, 155) and « le monde » (p. 339) of 1848. In sum, it may be challenging to make a synthesis out of these singulars and plurals, and there could be some uncertainty about whether the various contributions in the book deal with a single 1848 moment or multiple 1848 moments. In their introduction and conclusion, the editors suggest reconsidering 1848 as a coherent event in world history, at the crosspoint of different historical dynamics and evolutions (abolitionism, capitalism, imperialism, nationalism, migrations, the development of communications, social and political movements). The volume sketches the contours of this global 1848 moment through connections to the 1848 European revolutions, which still hold a central place.

9However, the book presents a plurality of views, which the editors acknowledge and embrace. Besides analyses of connections, it also includes articles on simultaneous events « qui ont lieu au même moment, sans être liées directement aux révolutions de 1848, et qui se rencontrent de manière collatérale » (p. 20), such as the Ethiopian troubles studied by Éloi Ficquet. The two approaches can even coexist in the same article. M’hamed Oualdi’s piece on the abolition of slavery in the Arab-Muslim world, for instance, explores the impact of the 1848 French abolition in Algeria and describes the contemporary abolitionist process in the surrounding Ottoman regencies –happening under British pressure and over a longer period. Therefore, the overall impression is of several 1848 moments, not necessarily related to the European 1848 nor less exceptional in their historical impact. It is the case of the North American 1848. This « autre 1848 », as Emmanuelle Perez-Tisserant calls it (p. 57), englobes the beginning of the Gold Rush, US expansion toward the Pacific, and the war against Mexico. As shown by Benoît Agnès, Edoardo Frezet, and Soazig Villerbu in their pieces on the circulations of people and ideas between Europe and the US, the different 1848 moments can be linked to one another. Still, they respond mainly to independent developments. A larger reliance on comparative methods –along with connections– might have proved productive in revealing similarities and recurring patterns.

10The book offers an alternative interpretative proposition to solve the aporia between one and more global moments 1848. In the first chapter, Megan Maruschke and Mattias Middell advance the hypothesis that 1848 represents a crucial moment in the processes of globalisation and re-spatialisation, i.e., the intensification of global connections and the reorganisation of the world in imperial nation-states. Less cautious than the editors, they challenge Europe’s centrality more overtly and put forward a paradigm to look at 1848 from a wholly global and unitary perspective. No longer tracing direct connections to the European springtime of the people, their account encompasses the Taiping and Sepoys revolts, the American Civil War, the Crimean conflict, the Opium wars, the Italian and German unifications, up to the Amerindian uprisings in Mexico studied by Regina Lira, and the projects of non-sovereign colonisation investigated by Clément Thibaud. Yet, globalisation and the imperial-national re-spatialisation span at least from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth century. The 1848 moment might well become unitary and global, but 1848 itself appears diluted as a specific date. As Deluermoz, Fureix, and Thibaud wrote, « toutes ces évolutions imbriquées expliquent la possibilité de penser un ‘1848 global’. Reste à savoir ce dont il s’agit » (p. 15). The question is still open.