Nationalism in Europe

Section I: Events and Processes

• This section covers key historical events and processes.

The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

• In 1848, French artist Frédéric Sorrieu created a series of prints envisioning a world of "democratic and social Republics."
• The first print depicts people of Europe and America, of all ages and social classes, marching and paying homage to the Statue of Liberty.
• Liberty bears the torch of Enlightenment and the Charter of the Rights of Man.
• The foreground shows shattered remains of absolutist institutions.
• Sorrieu's utopian vision portrays people grouped as distinct nations with flags and national costumes.
• The United States and Switzerland are leading the procession, already nation-states.
• France, identified by the revolutionary tricolor, has just reached the Statue.
• The people of Germany follow, bearing a black, red, and gold flag, expressing liberal hopes for unification in 1848.
• Austria, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Lombardy, Poland, England, Ireland, Hungary, and Russia follow the German people.
• Christ, saints, and angels are in the heavens above, symbolizing fraternity among nations.
• During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force for sweeping changes in Europe's political and mental landscape, leading to the rise of the nation-state.
• A modern state has a centralized power exercising sovereign control over a defined territory.
• A nation-state is one where the majority of its citizens develop a sense of common identity, shared history, and descent.
• This commonness was forged through struggles, leadership, and the actions of common people.
• Ernest Renan (1823-92), a French philosopher, in a lecture delivered at the University of Sorbonne in 1882, outlined his understanding of what constitutes a nation.
• Renan states that a nation is formed by a long past of endeavors, sacrifice, and devotion, based on a social capital of heroic past, great men, and glory.
• He emphasized the importance of common glories in the past and a common will in the present for the unity and progress of a people
• He considers a nation a large-scale solidarity.
• A daily plebiscite defines its existence.
• Nations guarantee liberty, which would be lost under a single law and master.
• Absolutist is a government or system of rule with no restraints on power, often centralized, militarized, and repressive monarchies.
• Utopian describes a vision of society so ideal it is unlikely to exist.
• Plebiscite is a direct vote where people accept or reject a proposal.

The French Revolution and the Idea of the Nation

• The first clear expression of nationalism was the French Revolution in 1789.
• France in 1789 was a full-fledged territorial state ruled by an absolute monarch.
• The French Revolution transferred sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens, proclaiming the people would shape their destiny.
• French revolutionaries promoted a sense of collective identity through ideas like la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen), emphasizing equal rights under a constitution.
• The tricolor became the new French flag, replacing the royal standard.
• The Estates General was elected by active citizens and renamed the National Assembly.
• New hymns were composed, oaths taken, and martyrs commemorated in the nation's name.
• A centralized system introduced uniform laws for all citizens, abolishing internal customs duties and adopting a uniform system of weights and measures.
• Regional dialects were discouraged and French, spoken and written in Paris, became the common language.
• Revolutionaries declared their mission to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism, helping them become nations.
• The news of events in France resulted in students and the educated middle class setting up Jacobin clubs.
• Their activities prepared the way for the French armies into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy in the 1790s.
• The French armies carried the idea of nationalism abroad.
• Napoleon introduced reforms in territories under French control.
• Although a return to monarchy, Napoleon destroyed democracy in France.
• Napoleon incorporated revolutionary principles for a more rational and efficient system in administration.
• The Civil Code of 1804, also known as the Napoleonic Code, abolished privileges based on birth, established equality before the law, and secured the right to property.
• The Code was exported to regions under French control.
• A German almanac designed by journalist Andreas Rebmann in 1798 featured the image of the French Bastille being stormed, next to a fortress representing despotic rule in the German province of Kassel with the slogan: 'The people must seize their own freedom!'.
• In the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, Napoleon simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system, and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues.
• Guild restrictions were removed and transport and communication systems improved.
• Businessmen and small-scale producers realized that uniform laws, standardized weights and measures, and a common national currency would facilitate the movement and exchange of goods and capital.
• Reactions to French rule in conquered areas were mixed.
• Initially, the French armies were welcomed as harbingers of liberty in places like Holland, Switzerland, Brussels, Mainz, Milan, and Warsaw.
• Initial enthusiasm turned to hostility due to a lack of political freedom, increased taxation, censorship, and forced conscription into the French armies.

The Making of Nationalism in Europe

• Mid-eighteenth-century Europe was not characterized by nation-states as we know them today.
• Germany, Italy, and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies, and cantons with autonomous rulers.
• Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies with diverse populations with no collective identity or common culture, often speaking different languages.
• The Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary comprised many regions and peoples, including the Alpine regions, Bohemia, Italian-speaking provinces, Hungary (where half spoke Magyar and half spoke dialects), and Galicia (aristocracy spoke Polish).
• There was a mass of subject peasant peoples like Bohemians, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, and Roumans.
• Such differences hindered a sense of political unity.
• The only tie was allegiance to the emperor.
• Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class, united by a common lifestyle transcending regional divisions, including estates in the country and town-houses.
• They spoke French for diplomacy and in high society with families tied by marriage, but this powerful aristocracy was numerically small.
• The majority was the peasantry.
• To the west, land was farmed by tenants and small owners, while in Eastern and Central Europe, landholding was characterized by vast estates cultivated by serfs.
• In Western and parts of Central Europe, industrial production and trade led to the growth of towns and commercial classes based on market production.
• Industrialization began in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, then in France and German states during the nineteenth century.
• New social groups emerged of a working-class population and middle classes of industrialists, businessmen, and professionals.
• In Central and Eastern Europe, these groups were smaller, but the educated, liberal middle classes popularized ideas of national unity and the abolition of aristocratic privileges.
• Ideas of national unity in early-nineteenth-century Europe were tied to Liberalism as in freedom.
• For the new middle classes, liberalism meant freedom for the individual and equality before the law.
• Politically, it emphasized government by consent.
• Since the French Revolution, liberalism had stood for the end of autocracy and clerical privileges, a constitution, and representative government through parliament alongside the inviolability of private property.
• However, equality before the law did not necessarily mean universal suffrage.
• In revolutionary France, the right to vote and get elected was only for property-owning men, excluding men without property and all women.
• All adult males enjoyed suffrage only briefly under the Jacobins.
• The Napoleonic Code reverted to limited suffrage and reduced women to a minor status under the authority of the fathers and husbands.
• Women and non-propertied men organized opposition movements for equal political rights throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• In the economic sphere, liberalism meant freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital, a strong demand of the emerging middle classes.
• Napoleon's administrative measures had created countless principalities in the German-speaking regions, a confederation of 39 states.
• Each state had its own currency, weights, and measures.
• Traveling merchants faced customs barriers and duties, often levied by weight or measurement, leading to time-consuming calculations, and variations in measures like the elle.
• Such conditions hindered economic exchange and growth.
• The new commercial classes wanted a unified economic territory for unhindered movement of goods, people, and capital.
• In 1834, a customs union or zollverein was formed at Prussia's initiative, joined by most German states, abolishing tariff barriers and reducing currencies, furthering mobility and national unification.
• Économists began considering the national economy, discussing how the nation could develop and what economic measures could unify it.
• Economic nationalism strengthened wider nationalist sentiments.
• Friedrich List, professor of Economics, wrote in 1834 that the zollverein's aim was to bind Germans economically into a nation.
• After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, European governments embraced Conservatism to preserve traditional institutions like monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property, and family.
• Post-revolution modernization was seen as a way to strengthen traditional institutions like the monarchy.
• A modern army, efficient bureaucracy, dynamic economy, and abolition of feudalism and serfdom could strengthen autocratic monarchies.

A New Conservatism after 1815

• In 1815, European powers - Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria - met at Vienna to establish a settlement for Europe, hosted by Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich.
• The Treaty of Vienna of 1815 aimed to undo most of the changes during the Napoleonic wars.
• The Bourbon dynasty was restored to power, and France lost annexed territories.
• States were set up to prevent French expansion, including the kingdom of the Netherlands (with Belgium), Genoa added to Piedmont, Prussia given new territories, and Austria controlling northern Italy.
• The German confederation of 39 states set up by Napoleon was untouched.
• Russia was given part of Poland, and Prussia was given a portion of Saxony.
• The main goal was to restore monarchies overthrown by Napoleon and create a new conservative order in Europe.
• Conservative regimes in 1815 were autocratic, not tolerating criticism and dissent, and sought to curb any activities questioning autocratic governments.
• Most imposed censorship laws on newspapers, books, plays, and songs reflecting the ideas of liberty and freedom associated with the French Revolution.
• The memory of the French Revolution inspired liberals who criticized the new conservative order, especially regarding freedom of the press.
• During the years following 1815, the fear of repression fueled many liberal-nationalists underground.
• Secret societies emerged to train revolutionaries.
• Being revolutionary meant opposing monarchical forms after the Vienna Congress and fighting for liberty and freedom.
• Most revolutionaries viewed nation-state creation as necessary.
• One such individual was the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini.
• Born in Genoa in 1805, he joined the Carbonari secret society and was exiled in 1831.
• He subsequently founded Young Italy in Marseilles and Young Europe in Berne.
• Mazzini believed that God intended nations to be the natural units of mankind, and Italy should be a unified republic within a wider alliance of nations for the basis of Italian liberty.
• His model led to secret societies in Germany, France, Switzerland, and Poland.
• Mazzini's relentless opposition to monarchy and democratic republics vision frightened conservatives, leading Metternich to call him ‘the most dangerous enemy of our social order'.
• Conservatism is a political philosophy emphasizing tradition, established institutions, and gradual development.

The Age of Revolutions: 1830-1848

• As conservative regimes consolidated power, liberalism and nationalism became associated with revolution in regions like the Italian and German states, the Ottoman Empire, Ireland, and Poland.
• These revolutions were led by liberal-nationalists in the educated middle class, including professors, teachers, clerks, and commercial middle-class members.
• The first upheaval was in France in July 1830, where the Bourbon kings were overthrown, replaced by a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe.
• The July Revolution spurred an uprising in Brussels, leading to Belgium breaking from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• The Greek war of independence mobilized nationalist feelings with Europe.
• Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century.
• Revolutionary nationalism sparked a struggle for independence among Greeks in 1821.
• Greek nationalists got support from other Greeks and Western Europeans who admired ancient Greek culture.
• Poets and artists praised Greece and mobilized public opinion against a Muslim empire.
• The English poet Lord Byron organized funds and fought in the war, dying in 1824 as a result.
• Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognized Greece as an independent nation.
• The development of nationalism was a result of wars and territorial expansion.
• Culture played a role by creating art, poetry, stories, and music to express and shape nationalist feelings.
• Romanticism, a cultural movement, sought to cultivate nationalist sentiment.
• Romantic artists and poets criticized reason and science while focusing on emotions, intuition, and mystical feelings.
• They aimed to create a shared collective heritage and cultural past as the foundation of a nation.
• German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) claimed that true German culture was found among common people (das volk) through folk songs, poetry, and dances (volksgeist).
• Collecting and recording folk culture became essential to nation-building.
• Emphasis on vernacular language and local folklore aimed to recover an ancient national spirit and carry the modern nationalist message to a mostly illiterate audience.
• This was relevant in Poland, partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, where national feelings were preserved through music and language despite the lack of independence.
• Karol Kurpinski celebrated struggle through operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.
• Language played a role in developing nationalist sentiments.
• After Russian occupation, the Polish language faced suppression within schools and from the Russian language.
• In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule was suppressed; clergy in Poland used the language as a tool of national resistance, resulting in imprisonment or being sent to Siberia for refusal to preach in Russian.
• The use of Polish became a symbol of struggle against Russian dominance.

Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

• The 1830s were years of major economic hardship in Europe.
• The first half of the nineteenth century saw population increase across Europe.
• Most countries had more job seekers than employment.
• Rural populations migrated to cities, resulting in overcrowded slums.
• Small producers in towns faced competition from machine-made goods from England.
• Where aristocracy enjoyed power, peasants struggled with feudal dues and obligations.
• Rising food prices and bad harvests caused pauperism in towns and country.
• The year 1848 was one such year.
• Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought Parisians to the streets.
• Barricades were built, and Louis Philippe was forced to flee.
• The National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, gave suffrage to all adult males over 21, and guaranteed the right to work.
• National workshops were set up for employment.
• In 1845, Silesian weavers revolted against contractors who supplied raw material, ordered finished textiles, but drastically reduced payments.
• Journalist Wilhelm Wolff described the events in a Silesian village.
• On June 4 at 2 p.m., weavers marched to the contractor demanding higher wages and were met with scorn and threats.
• They forced their way into the house, smashed windows, furniture, and porcelain.
• Another group looted the storehouse, tearing cloth.
• The contractor fled but returned 24 hours later with the army.
• In the exchange, eleven weavers were shot.

1848: The Revolution of the Liberals

• Revolutions led by the educated middle classes occurred across many European countries in 1848, parallel to revolts of the poor, unemployed and starving.
• Events in France in February 1848 resulted in the abdication of the monarch, and a republic based on universal male suffrage.
• In areas where independent nation-states did not exist (Germany, Italy, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire), liberal middle-class men and women combined constitutionalism demands with national unification.
• They utilized popular unrest to push for a nation-state based on parliamentary principles, with a constitution, freedom of press and association.
• Large-scale political associations in Germany formed in the city of Frankfurt.
• On 18 May 1848, elected representatives marched to the Frankfurt parliament meeting.
• They drafted a constitution for a German nation headed by a monarch subject to parliament.
• When the deputies offered the crown to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly.
• The aristocracy and military grew stronger, while the parliament’s social base eroded.
• The middle classes dominated the parliament; they lost support by resisting workers’ demands.
• Troops were called in, and the assembly was forced to disband.
• Extending political rights to women was debated within the liberal movement.
• Women formed political associations, founded newspapers, and participated in meetings and demonstrations. Were, not given suffrage rights.
• The Frankfurt parliament, in the Church of St Paul, only admitted women as observers in the visitors' gallery.
• Although conservative forces suppressed liberal movements in 1848, they could not restore the old order.
• Monarchs began to realize that cycles of revolution and repression could end by granting concessions to liberal-nationalist revolutionaries.
• After 1848, autocratic monarchies in Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce the changes of Western Europe before 1815.
• Serfdom and bonded labor were abolished in Habsburg dominions and Russia.
• The Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to Hungarians in 1867.
• Feminist pertains to the awareness of women's rights and interests based on belief and the social, economic, and political equality of the genders.
• Ideology is a system of ideas reflecting a specific social and political vision.

The Making of Germany and Italy

• Nationalism drifted away from democracy and revolution after 1848.
• Nationalists were used by conservatives to promote power and political domination.
• Germany and Italy were unified as nation-states.
• Nationalist feelings were common among middle-class Germans.
• In 1848 there was an attempt to unite the German Confederation under an elected parliament.
• This initiative was suppressed by the monarchy, military, and Junkers (large landowners) of Prussia.
• Prussia led the movement for national unification.
• Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, architected the process via thePrussian army and bureaucracy.
• Three wars over seven years, with Austria, Denmark, and France. Ended in Prussian victory which completed unification.
• In January 1871, King William I of Prussia became German Emperor in a ceremony.
• Princes of the German states, army representatives, and Prussian ministers gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to proclaim the German Empire, headed by Kaiser William I of Prussia.
• The nation-building underscored Prussian state power dominance, modernizing currency, banking, and legal and judicial systems in Germany.
• Prussian measures became a model for the rest of Germany.
• Like Germany, Italy had a history of political fragmentation
• Italians were scattered across several dynastic states plus the Habsburg Empire.
• Mid-nineteeth century Italy was divided into seven states, one (Sardinia-Piedmont) was ruled by an Italian.
• The north region was under Austrian Habsburgs, the center was ruled by the Pope, southern regions belonged to Bourbon kings of Spain.
• Italian language had no common form; different regional variations existed.
• Giuseppe Mazzini sought for a unitary Italian Republic.
• He formed the secret society Young Italy.
• Revolutionary uprisings in 1831 and 1848 failed.
• Sardinia-Piedmont, under King Victor Emmanuel II, took over the task of unifying the Italian states through war.
• Ruling elites saw unification as offering both economic development and political dominance to Italy.
• Chief Minister Cavour led the way regions of Italy.
• He was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat.
• Like many wealthy and educated Italians, he spoke French better than he did Italian.
• Sardinia-Piedmont allied, through Cavour's efforts, with France and defeated the Austrian forces in 1859.
• Armed volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi joined in.
• In 1860, they marched into South Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, gaining local peasant support to drive out Spanish rulers.
• Victor Emmanuel II became king of united Italy in 1861.
• However, many Italians were unaware/illiterate of liberal-nationalist ideology.
• Peasants supporting Garibaldi had never heard of Italia and believed "La Talia" was Victor Emmanuel's wife.

The Strange Case of Britain

• Great Britain has been considered the model of the nation-state.
• The process was not of sudden upheaval or revolution.
• There was no British nation prior to the eighteenth century.
• The original peoples inhabiting inhabited the British Isles were of similar ethnic origins like the English, Welsh, Scot or Irish.
• They each had their own cultural and political traditions.
• As England grew in wealth, importance, and political power, it extended influence over other nations on the islands.
• In 1688, the English parliament seized power from the monarchy, becoming the instrument for forging a nation-state with England at its center.
• The Act of Union 1707 between England and Scotland formed the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain,’ effectively making England able to impose its influence on Scotland.
• The parliament was dominated by English members.
• As a British identity grew, Scotland's distinctive culture and institutions were suppressed.
• Catholic clans in the Scottish Highlands faced suppression whenever they asserted independence.
• The Scottish Highlanders faced restrictions on speaking Gaelic or wearing national dress and were forcibly driven from their homeland.
• Ireland faced similar fate.
• It was divided between Catholics and Protestants.
• The English helped Ireland's Protestants to achieve dominance over Catholics.
• Catholic revolts against British dominance were put down.
• After a failed revolt (led by Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen in 1798,) Ireland was forcefully integrated into the United Kingdom in 1801.
• A new ‘British nation’ was forged with English culture dominance.
• Symbols like the British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble King), and the English language were promoted, with the older nations acting as subordinate partners in this union.
• Ethnic relates to a similar racial, tribal, or cultural origin which a community identifies with or claims.

Visualising the Nation

• Eighteenth-and nineteenth-century artists personified nations to represent it as a country as it were a person.
• Nations were portrayed as female figures.
• The female form sought to provide a concrete form for the abstract idea of the nation.
• The female figure became an allegory of the nation.
• During the French Revolution, artists used female allegory to represent concepts like Liberty, Justice and the Republic.
• Attributes of Liberty are the red cap or the broken chain, while Justice is commonly a blindfolded woman using a weighing scales.
• Similar female allegories were invented to represent nations in the nineteenth century.
• In France, she was called Marianne, a popular name, which emphasized notion of a people’s nation.
• The characteristics of Marianne were that of Liberty and the Republic like the red cap, the tricolor, and the cockade.
• Statues of Marianne were established in public squares, reminding the public to identify with it.
• Marianne’s images were marked on coins and stamps.
• Similarly, Germania became the allegory of the German nation.
• Germania is visually characterized by wearing a crown of oak leaves as an emblem for heroism.
• Allegory is when an abstract idea (freedom or liberty) is symbolized through a person or thing.

Nationalism and Imperialism

• By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, nationalism transformed into a creed with narrow goals.
• Nationalist groups became intolerant and aggressive towards one another.
• European powers manipulated nationalist desires to extend their own imperialist aims.
• After 1871, the area called the Balkans was the gravest source of nationalist tension in Europe.
• The Balkans was a region of geographical and ethnic diversity, which comprises modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
• All of those that inhabited were known as the Slavs.
• Much of the Balkans was controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
• Nationalist ideas in the Balkans, with the Ottoman Empire's decline, made the region unstable.
• Through the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire moved towards modernizing through internal reforms.
• However, this had little success due to their European nationalities that broke away to declare their independence.
• Balkan peoples linked historical information on a nation to prove they had once been independent and were being invaded by foreign powers.
• Rebellions thought of their struggles as attempts to win back their long-lost independence.
• Slavic nationalities tried to define their individual identities.
• Because of this, there was intense conflict around the Balkan regions.
• Balkan states were very competitive with each other to achieve more territory to expense the others.
• The Balkans was the scene of power rivalry.
• Intense power rivalries existed between the European powers and colonialism.
• Militarization was prominent in the region.
• In the way the Balkans were unfolded, each power - Russia, Germany, England, and Austro-Hungary - were keen on the hold the other powers had over the Balkans.
• This led to multiple wars in the region and eventually World War I.
• Nationalism joined with imperialism led Europe to disaster as stated in 1914.
• Meanwhile, other countries had been colonized during nineteenth-century began to oppose domination imperialism.
• Anti-imperial movements were nationalist in the aim form independent nation-states plus they were inspired with the combined national unity made in battles with the imperialism.
• Ideas of nationalism became nowhere replicated, as people around developed the unique variations nationalism.
• Societies should be designed in ‘nation-states’ has come to be approved of as both natural and very broad.