The Rise of Nationalism in EuropeClass 10 History Notes

The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

In 1848, a French artist named Frédéric Sorrieu created a series of prints that imagined a world of ‘democratic and social Republics’. His first print shows a powerful vision for the future of Europe.

• A Procession of Nations: Peoples of Europe and America are seen marching in a long train, paying homage to the Statue of Liberty. This statue holds the torch of Enlightenment in one hand and the Charter of the Rights of Man in the other.
• The End of Absolute Rule: In the foreground lie the shattered remains of crowns and symbols of absolutist institutions—governments with no restraints on their power.
• The Dream of Nation-States: In Sorrieu's utopian vision (an ideal society unlikely to exist), the peoples of the world are grouped as distinct nations, identifiable by their flags and national costumes. The United States and Switzerland, already nation-states, lead the procession, followed by France and the German peoples, who at the time were still hoping for unification.
• Fraternity Among Nations: Watching over the scene from the heavens are Christ, saints, and angels, symbolizing a sense of brotherhood and unity among the world's nations.

This vision sets the stage for the major changes of the nineteenth century. Nationalism emerged as a powerful force that reshaped the political and mental world of Europe, leading to the rise of the nation-state. A nation-state was not just a territory with a ruler; it was a place where the majority of citizens shared a sense of common identity, history, and culture, forged through common struggles.

What is a Nation?

According to the French philosopher Ernst Renan, a nation is not formed simply by a common language, race, religion, or territory. Instead, he argued that a nation is built on:

• A shared past of sacrifice, devotion, and heroic deeds.
• A common will in the present to continue this legacy.
• A "daily plebiscite," meaning that the existence of a nation depends on the continuous choice of its people to be part of it.

For Renan, the existence of nations was a guarantee of liberty. If the world had only one law and one master, liberty would be lost.

The French Revolution and the Idea of the Nation

The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789. Before the revolution, France was ruled by an absolute monarch. The revolution transferred sovereignty—the right to rule—from the monarchy to the French citizens. It declared that the people would shape the nation's destiny.

Creating a Collective Identity

The French revolutionaries introduced several measures to create a sense of collective identity among the French people:

• The Fatherland and the Citizen: The ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) promoted the idea of a united community with equal rights under a constitution.
• New Symbols: A new French flag, the tricolour, was chosen to replace the royal standard.
• A New Government: The Estates General was renamed the National Assembly and was elected by active citizens.
• National Unity: New hymns were composed, oaths were taken, and martyrs were commemorated in the name of the nation. A centralised administrative system created uniform laws for all citizens.
• Economic Union: Internal customs duties were abolished, and a uniform system of weights and measures was adopted.
• A Common Language: French, as spoken and written in Paris, became the common language of the nation, and regional dialects were discouraged.

The revolutionaries also declared it was their mission to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism and help them become nations. Inspired by these events, students and educated middle classes in other European cities began setting up Jacobin clubs.

Napoleon's Reforms and Their Impact

When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power, he destroyed democracy in France by returning to a monarchy. However, in the administrative field, he introduced revolutionary principles to make the system more rational and efficient.

The Civil Code of 1804, also known as the Napoleonic Code, had a huge impact:

• It did away with all privileges based on birth.
• It established equality before the law.
• It secured the right to property.

Napoleon exported these reforms to territories under French control, such as the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. He simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system, freed peasants from serfdom, and removed guild restrictions in towns. Improved transport and communication, uniform laws, and a common national currency helped businessmen and producers.

However, the reaction to French rule was mixed. Initially, French armies were welcomed as harbingers of liberty. But this enthusiasm soon turned to hostility because the new arrangements did not grant political freedom. Increased taxation, censorship, and forced conscription into the French armies seemed to outweigh the benefits of administrative reforms.

The Making of Nationalism in Europe

In the mid-eighteenth century, Europe was not made up of nation-states as we know them today. Germany, Italy, and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies, and cantons. Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies, like the Habsburg Empire that ruled over Austria-Hungary. This empire was a patchwork of different regions and peoples who spoke different languages and had no shared identity. The only tie binding them was a common allegiance to the emperor.

The Aristocracy and the New Middle Class

Socially and politically, the landed aristocracy was the dominant class. They were a small group but owned vast estates and town-houses, spoke French in high society, and were connected by marriage. The majority of the population was made up of the peasantry.

With the growth of industrial production and trade in Western and parts of Central Europe, towns grew and new social groups emerged: a working-class population and middle classes made up of industrialists, businessmen, and professionals. It was among these educated, liberal middle classes that the ideas of national unity and the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity.

What did Liberal Nationalism Stand for?

In the early nineteenth century, nationalism was closely tied to the ideology of liberalism. The term comes from the Latin root liber, meaning free.

• For the new middle classes, liberalism meant:

  • Freedom for the individual.
  • Equality of all before the law.
  • Government by consent.
  • An end to autocracy and clerical privileges.
  • A constitution and representative government through parliament.
  • The inviolability of private property.

• In the economic sphere, liberalism stood for:

  • Freedom of markets.
  • Abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.

To promote economic unity, a customs union called the zollverein was formed in 1834 at the initiative of Prussia and joined by most of the German states. It abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two, helping to bind the German people economically.

A New Conservatism after 1815

Following Napoleon's defeat in 1815, European governments were driven by a spirit of conservatism. Conservatives believed in preserving traditional institutions like the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, and the family. However, many realised that modernisation (like an efficient army, a dynamic economy, and the abolition of feudalism) could actually strengthen monarchies.

In 1815, representatives of Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria met in Vienna to draw up a settlement for Europe. The Congress was hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich. The resulting Treaty of Vienna of 1815 aimed to:

• Restore the monarchies that Napoleon had overthrown, including the Bourbon dynasty in France.
• Prevent future French expansion by setting up a series of states on France's boundaries.
• Create a new conservative order in Europe.

The conservative regimes set up in 1815 were autocratic. They did not tolerate criticism and imposed censorship laws to control what was said in newspapers, books, and plays.

The Revolutionaries

The fear of repression drove many liberal-nationalists underground. Secret societies were formed to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas. To be a revolutionary meant opposing the monarchical forms established by the Vienna Congress and fighting for liberty and the creation of nation-states.

One of the most important revolutionaries was the Italian Giuseppe Mazzini.

• Born in Genoa in 1807, he was a member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
• He was exiled in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria.
• He founded two underground societies: Young Italy in Marseilles and Young Europe in Berne.
• Mazzini believed that God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind. He fought for the unification of Italy into a single republic.
• His relentless opposition to monarchy and his vision of democratic republics frightened the conservatives. Metternich described him as ‘the most dangerous enemy of our social order’.

The Age of Revolutions: 1830-1848

As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their power, liberalism and nationalism became increasingly associated with revolution. These revolutions were led by the educated middle-class elite.

• The July Revolution (1830): The first upheaval took place in France. The Bourbon kings were overthrown and replaced by a constitutional monarchy headed by Louis Philippe. This sparked an uprising in Brussels, which led to Belgium breaking away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• The Greek War of Independence (1821-1832): Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century. The growth of revolutionary nationalism sparked a struggle for independence. Nationalists in Greece received support from West Europeans who admired ancient Greek culture. Poets and artists mobilised public opinion. Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation.

The Romantic Imagination and National Feeling

Nationalism also developed through culture. Romanticism, a cultural movement, played a key role. Romantic artists and poets criticised the glorification of reason and science, focusing instead on emotions, intuition, and mystical feelings. They sought to create a sense of a shared collective heritage and a common cultural past as the basis of a nation.

• Folk Culture: The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people—das volk. He believed the true spirit of the nation (volksgeist) was popularised through folk songs, poetry, and dances. The Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, collected old folktales and published them, believing they were expressions of a pure German spirit.
• Language and Music: In Poland, which had been partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, national feelings were kept alive through music and language. Karol Kurpinski turned folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols. After Russian occupation, the Polish language became a weapon of national resistance, used in church gatherings against Russian dominance.

Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe. There was a huge increase in population, leading to more job seekers than employment. People from rural areas migrated to overcrowded city slums. Small producers faced stiff competition from cheap machine-made goods from England.

The year 1848 was particularly bad. Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris onto the roads. Louis Philippe was forced to flee, and a Republic was proclaimed. This new government granted suffrage to all adult males over 21 and guaranteed the right to work.

Earlier, in 1845, weavers in Silesia had led a revolt against contractors who drastically reduced their payments for finished textiles.

1848: The Revolution of the Liberals

Parallel to the revolts of the poor, a revolution led by the educated middle classes was underway in 1848. In parts of Europe like Germany, Italy, and Poland, liberal middle classes combined their demands for constitutionalism with national unification. They pushed for the creation of a nation-state based on parliamentary principles: a constitution, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.

• The Frankfurt Parliament: In the German regions, middle-class professionals, businessmen, and artisans came together in the city of Frankfurt and voted for an all-German National Assembly. On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives convened in the Church of St Paul. They drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarch subject to a parliament.
• Failure of the Parliament: When the crown was offered to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the assembly. The parliament lost support from workers and artisans, and in the end, troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband.

The issue of women's political rights was controversial. Women had actively participated in the liberal movement, but they were denied suffrage rights and were only allowed to observe the Frankfurt parliament proceedings from the visitors' gallery.

The Making of Germany and Italy

After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association with democracy and revolution. Nationalist sentiments were now often mobilized by conservatives to promote state power and political domination.

Germany - Can the Army be the Architect of a Nation?

The liberal attempt to unify Germany in 1848 was repressed by the monarchy and the military, supported by the large landowners (Junkers) of Prussia. From then on, Prussia took the lead in the movement for national unification.

• Otto von Bismarck, Prussia's chief minister, was the architect of this process. He carried it out with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy, not through liberal ideals.
• Three wars over seven years—with Denmark, Austria, and France—ended in Prussian victory and completed the process of unification.
• In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed German Emperor in a ceremony held at the Palace of Versailles.

The new German state placed a strong emphasis on modernising currency, banking, and legal systems, with Prussian practices often becoming a model for the rest of Germany.

Italy Unified

Like Germany, Italy had a long history of political fragmentation. In the mid-nineteenth century, it was divided into seven states. Only one, Sardinia-Piedmont, was ruled by an Italian princely house.

The unification process was led by key figures:

1. Giuseppe Mazzini: He had tried to create a unitary Italian Republic in the 1830s through his secret society, Young Italy, but his revolutionary uprisings failed.
2. King Victor Emmanuel II: The ruler of Sardinia-Piedmont, who took on the task of unifying the Italian states through war. For the ruling elites, a unified Italy offered economic development and political dominance.
3. Chief Minister Cavour: He led the movement to unify Italy. He was a skilled diplomat, not a revolutionary. Through a tactful alliance with France, he defeated Austrian forces in 1859.
4. Giuseppe Garibaldi: A dedicated revolutionary who, in 1860, led a large number of armed volunteers (known as the Red Shirts) into South Italy. They won the support of local peasants and drove out the Spanish rulers.

In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of a united Italy. However, much of the illiterate peasant population remained unaware of the liberal-nationalist ideology.

The Strange Case of Britain

The formation of the nation-state in Britain was not the result of a sudden revolution but a long, drawn-out process. There was no "British nation" before the eighteenth century. The British Isles were inhabited by different ethnic groups—English, Welsh, Scot, and Irish—each with its own cultural and political traditions.

• As the English nation grew in wealth and power, it extended its influence over the other nations of the islands.
• The Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland resulted in the formation of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’. In effect, it allowed England to impose its influence on Scotland, whose distinctive culture and political institutions were suppressed.
• Ireland suffered a similar fate. The English helped the Protestants establish dominance over a largely Catholic country. After a failed revolt in 1798, Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801.
• A new ‘British nation’ was forged by promoting a dominant English culture. The symbols of the new Britain—the British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble King), and the English language—were actively promoted.

Visualising the Nation

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, artists began to personify nations, representing a country as if it were a person. Nations were portrayed as female figures, creating an allegory—an abstract idea expressed through a person or a thing.

• Marianne: In France, the nation was christened Marianne. She was characterized by the symbols of Liberty and the Republic—the red cap, the tricolour, and the cockade. Statues of Marianne were erected in public squares as a national symbol of unity.
• Germania: In Germany, the allegory was Germania. She wears a crown of oak leaves, as the German oak stands for heroism. Her image was often depicted with symbols of strength, readiness to fight, and the beginning of a new era.

Nationalism and Imperialism

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, nationalism had lost its idealistic, liberal-democratic sentiment. It became a narrow creed with limited ends. Nationalist groups grew intolerant of each other and were ready to go to war. The major European powers manipulated these nationalist aspirations to further their own imperialist aims.

The Balkans: A Source of Tension

The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871 was an area called the Balkans. This was a region of great geographical and ethnic variation, including modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Croatia, Serbia, and others. Its inhabitants were broadly known as the Slavs.

• A Weakening Empire: A large part of the Balkans was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. As the empire weakened and romantic nationalism spread, the region became very explosive.
• Struggles for Independence: The Balkan peoples, one by one, broke away and declared independence. They used history to prove they had once been independent and had been subjugated by a foreign power.
• Intense Conflict: As the different Slavic nationalities struggled to define their identity, the Balkan area became one of intense conflict. The Balkan states were fiercely jealous of each other and hoped to gain more territory at the expense of others.
• Big Power Rivalry: The situation was complicated by the rivalry among the big European powers—Russia, Germany, England, Austro-Hungary—who were keen on extending their own control over the area. This led to a series of wars in the region and finally, the First World War in 1914.

Nationalism, when aligned with imperialism, led Europe to disaster. Meanwhile, many colonized countries around the world began to oppose imperial domination. These anti-imperial movements were also nationalist, as they struggled to form independent nation-states, inspired by a sense of collective unity forged in their confrontation with imperialism.