1. The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

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Chapter 1: The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

The 19th century {1 January 1801 and ended on 31 December 1900} saw nationalism emerge as a force that brought about sweeping changes in the political and mental world of Europe. This eventually resulted in the replacement of multi-national dynastic empires with the Nation-State.

1. Frédéric Sorrieu and His Visualization

In 1848, French artist Frédéric Sorrieu prepared a series of four prints visualizing his dream of a world made up of ‘democratic and social Republics’.

• The Vision: People of Europe and America marching in a long train, offering homage to the Statue of Liberty.

• Liberty: Represented as a female figure holding the Torch of Enlightenment in one hand and the Charter of the Rights of Man in the other.

  • France - identified by the revolutionary tricolor
  • Germany - black, red, golden flag
  • peoples of Austria
  • Kingdom of Two sicilies
  • Lombardy
  • Poland
  • England
  • Ireland
  • Hungary
  • Russia
    

• Utopian Vision: In Sorrieu’s vision, peoples of the world are grouped as distinct nations, identified through their flags and national costumes.

• Absolutism: On the earth in the foreground lie the shattered remains of the symbols of absolutist institutions.

What is a Nation? - Ernst Renan

• In 1882, the French philosopher Ernst Renan published a famous essay titled "What is a Nation?"
• He criticizes that a nation not is formed by a common language, race, religion, or territory.
• For him, a nation is a combination of a long past of endeavors, sacrifice, and devotion, a heroic past, great men, glory.
• For a nation to exist, there have to be common glories in the past, common will in the present, and a wish to perform still more, displaying a large-scale solidarity. Its existence is a daily plebiscite and a guarantee of liberty.

2. The French Revolution and the Idea of the Nation

The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789.

• Political Changes: Sovereignty transferred from the monarchy to a body of French citizens.

• Creating Collective Identity: * Ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen).

  • A new French flag (the tricolour) replaced the former royal standard.

  • The Estates General was renamed the National Assembly.

  • A centralized administrative system was put in place.

  • Internal customs duties and dues were abolished.

  • French became the common language of the nation.

Jacobin Clubs

• The educated middle class began setting up Jacobin clubs, which prepared the way for the French armies to move into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, and much of Italy in the 1790s.
• The armies carried the idea of nationalism abroad.
• The armies were welcomed in places like Holland, Switzerland, Brussels, Mainz, Milan, and Warsaw.
• They were seen as the harbingers of liberty but soon turned into hostility.
• Increased taxation, censorship, forced conscription into the French armies to conquer the rest of Europe.

Napoleon {1769 - 1821} {1804 - 1814} and the Civil Code (1804)

Napoleon destroyed democracy in France but introduced revolutionary principles in the administrative field.

• The code was exported to the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, which was under the control of Napoleon.

• The Napoleonic Code (Civil Code of 1804):

  • Did away with all privileges based on birth.

  • Established equality before the law.

  • Secured the right to property.

  • Simplified administrative divisions and abolished the feudal system.

  • Uniform laws and standardized weights and measures were introduced.

3. The Making of Nationalism in Europe

Mid-18th-century Europe had no "nation-states."

• Germany, Italy, Switzerland, divided into kingdoms, duchies, and cantons. For example,

Austria - Hungary

• the Habsburg Empire ruled over Austria-Hungary and consisted of a patchwork of different regions and peoples speaking various languages (German, Italian, Magyar, etc.).
• Elite people of different groups
  • Alpine regions of Tyrol, Austria, and Sudetenland, Bohemia, German speaking.
  • Lombardy and Venetia, Italian speaking
  • Hungary spoke Magyar
  • Galicia spoke Polish.
• Peasant people
  • Bohemians and Slovaks to the north,
  • Slovenens in Carniola,
  • Croats to the south,
  • Roumans to the east in Transylvania,
• common allegiance to the empire and emperor.

• The Aristocracy: The socially and politically dominant class. They were a small group, united by a common way of life, and spoke French for purposes of diplomacy and ties of marriage.

• The New Middle Class: Emerged due to industrialization. Consisted of industrialists, businessmen, and professionals. It was among the educated, liberal middle classes that the ideas of national unity gained popularity, in the eastern and central Europe predominantly.

Liberal Nationalism

• Literary meaning: Latin root word, "Liber" meaning free.

• Political Meaning: Freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law. It emphasized the concept of government by consent. This doesn't necessarily stand for universal suffrage.

• Economic Meaning: Freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital. own currency and weights and measures for the people.

  • In 1833, from Hamburg to Nuremberg to sell goods, one had to pass through eleven customs barriers and pay a customs duty of about 5% at each one of them.
  • Duties were levied according to the weight or measurement of the goods, and each region had its own system of weights and measurements, which involved time-consuming calculation.
  • The measure of cloth was the elle., which in each region stood for a different length.
    • In Frankfurt, it is 54.7 cm.
    • In Mainz, 55.1 cm.
    • In Nuremberg, 65.6 cm.
    • In Freiburg, 53.5 cm.

• Zollverein (1834): A customs union formed at the initiative of Prussia. It abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two.

4. A New Conservatism after 1815

Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven by a spirit of conservatism. They believed that established, traditional institutions like the monarchy, Church, and social hierarchies should be preserved.

Napoleon was defeated by the European powers of Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

• The Treaty of Vienna (1815): Hosted by Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich.

  • Goal: To undo the changes brought about by Napoleonic wars and restore monarchies.

  • Results: The Bourbon dynasty was restored to power in France. A series of states were set up on the boundaries of France to prevent French expansion. Prussia was given important new territories.

Revolutionaries

• Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, born in Genoa in 1807, became a member of the secret society of Carbonari.
• A young man of 24, he started two more underground societies, Young Italy in Marseilles and Young Europe in Berne.
• Metternich, German statesman and diplomat, described him as the most dangerous enemy of our social order.

5. The Age of Revolutions (1830–1848)

• In July 1830 in France, the Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815 were overthrown by the liberal revolutionaries, who installed a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe as its head.

• When France sneezes, the rest of the Europe catches cold, said Metternich.

• The July Revolution sparked an uprising in Brussels, which led to Belgium breaking away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

• The Greek War of Independence: Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the 15th century. The struggle for independence began in 1821. The Treaty of Constantinople (1832) recognized Greece as an independent nation.

  

• Romanticism: A cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment through art, poetry, stories, and music rather than science and reason.

  • German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) plain that, through German culture, was to be discovered among the common people.
  • Emphasized on the vernacular language and collection of local folklore

• In the case of Poland, which was partitioned by the great powers Russia, Prussia, and Austria, Poland no longer existed as an independent territory. National feelings were kept alive through music and language.

  • Karol Kurpinski celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning them into nationalist symbols.

• Hunger, Hardship, and Popular Revolt: The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe due to population increase, migration to cities, and competition from machine-made goods..

  • Imports of cheap machine-made goods from England, where industrialization was far more advanced than in other countries.
  • 1845: The weavers in Silesia revolted against the contractors for reducing their payments. They marched to the mansions of the contractors and smashed the furniture and broke into the storehouse and plundered it. The contractors returned 24 hours later, having requisitioned the army, which shot and killed 11 weavers.
  • 1848: Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads.
  • Louis Philippi was forced to flee.
    

Revolution of the liberals

• February 1848 in France, the abdication of the monarch, spread to other parts of Europe where independent nation-states did not exist.
  • Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
• The liberal middle class combined their demands for constitutionalism with national unification.
• Thus, the creation of a nation state on the parliamentary principles (the constitution, freedom of the press, and freedom of association) started to emerge.

Germany's protests

• The 841 elected representatives of the middle-class educated people came together in the city of Frankfurt to vote for an all-German National Assembly on 18 May 1848.
• The Frankfurt Parliament convened in the church of St. Paul and drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to the parliament.
• Frederick Wilhelm IV, the king of Prussia, rejected and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly.
• The parliament, dominated by the middle class, started to lose their support as the troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband.

Women's rights - a controversy

• The use of extending political rights to the women was a controversial one.
• Women had founded their own political associations, founded newspapers, and had taken part in political meetings and demonstrations.
• Still, they were admitted as observers in the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of Saint Paul.

Reforms in eastern Europe after 1848

• The conservative forces could not restore the old order.

• Thus, after 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce changes which had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815.

• Serfdom and bonded labor were abolished in Habsburg dominions and Russia.

• Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867.

6. The Unification of Germany and Italy

Germany

• middle-class governments in 1848 tried to reunite different regions of the German Confederation but were repressed by the combined forces of the monarchy and the military.
• Prussia took on the leadership of the movement for national unification with its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck.
• Three wars over seven years with Austria, Denmark, and France ended in Prussian victory and completed the process of unification in 18th January 1871.
• The Prussian King, Kaiser William I of Prussia, was proclaimed as the German Emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles.
• Resulted in the dominance of Prussian state power, strong emphasis on modernising the currency, banking, legal and judicial systems in germany, on the lines of Prussia's existing structure.
  

Italy

• Italy scattered over 7 states
• only Sardinia Piedmont, was ruled by the Italian princely house
  • North - under Austrian Habsburg
  • Centre - under Pope
  • South - Bourbon kings of Spain
• Italian languages had many regional and local variations
• 1830s - Giuseppe Mazzini sought to put together unitary Italian republic
• Found a secret society - young Italy
• failure of revolutions in 1831 and 1848
• Now the Sardinia Piedmont under ruler king Victor Emmanuel II, tried to unify Italy .
• Chief Minister Cavour, led the movement, which was neither revolutionary nor a democratic.
  • He spoke much French than he did Italian
  • his tactical diplomacy with France, led Sardinia defeat the Austrian forces in 1859
• Armed volunteers under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi, joined the movement.
• in 1860, marched into South Italy and kingdom of Two Sicilies, winning the support of local peasants and driven out the Spanish rulers.
• Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy in 1861.
• But much of the Italian population, were illiterate, do not know about the nationalist ideology.

7. Visualizing the Nation

Artists in the 18th and 19th centuries personified the nation as female figures (Allegories).

• France: Marianne (symbolizing the Republic and Liberty).

• Germany: Germania (wearing a crown of oak leaves, as the German oak stands for heroism).

8. Nationalism and Imperialism

By the last quarter of the 19th century, nationalism lost its idealistic liberal-democratic sentiment.

• The Balkans: The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871. It was a region of geographical and ethnic variation under Ottoman control.

• As different Slavic nationalities struggled to define their identity and independence, the Balkan area became an area of intense conflict, eventually leading to World War I.