Comprehensive theory, key formulas, diagrams, and memory aids for The Rise of Nationalism in Europe.
During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force that brought about sweeping changes in the political and mental world of Europe. The end result of these changes was the emergence of the nation-state in place of the multi-national dynastic empires of Europe. A nation-state was one in which the majority of its citizens, and not only its rulers, came to develop a sense of common identity and shared history or descent.
The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789. France was a full-fledged territorial state in 1789 under the rule of an absolute monarch. The political and constitutional changes that came in the wake of the French Revolution led to the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens. The revolution proclaimed that it was the people who would henceforth constitute the nation and shape its destiny.
Measures and Practices introduced by French Revolutionaries: * The ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) emphasized the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution. * A new French flag, the tricolour, was chosen to replace the former royal standard. * The Estates General was elected by the body of active citizens and renamed the National Assembly. * New hymns were composed, oaths taken, and martyrs commemorated, all in the name of the nation. * A centralized administrative system was put in place and it formulated uniform laws for all citizens within its territory. * Internal customs duties and dues were abolished and a uniform system of weights and measures was adopted. * Regional dialects were discouraged and French, as it was spoken and written in Paris, became the common language of the nation.
When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power, he set about introducing many of the reforms that he had already introduced in France into the territories that came under his control. Through a return to monarchy, Napoleon had destroyed democracy in France. However, in the administrative field, he had incorporated revolutionary principles to make the whole system more rational and efficient. The Civil Code of 1804 (usually known as the Napoleonic Code) did away with all privileges based on birth, established equality before the law, and secured the right to property. This Code was exported to the regions under French control, such as the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany.
If you look at the map of mid-eighteenth-century Europe, you will find that there were no 'nation-states' as we know them today. What we know today as Germany, Italy, and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies, and cantons whose rulers had their autonomous territories. Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies within the territories of which lived diverse peoples. They did not see themselves as sharing a collective identity or a common culture.
The Aristocracy and the New Middle Class Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class on the continent. The members of this class were united by a common way of life that cut across regional divisions. However, this powerful aristocracy was numerically a small group. In Western and parts of Central Europe, the growth of industrial production and trade meant the growth of towns and the emergence of commercial classes. In its wake, new social groups came into being: a working-class population and middle classes made up of industrialists, businessmen, and professionals. It was among the educated, liberal middle classes that ideas of national unity following the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity.
The term ‘liberalism’ derives from the Latin root liber, meaning free. For the new middle classes, liberalism stood for freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law. Politically, it emphasized the concept of 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. In the economic sphere, liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital. During the nineteenth century, this was a strong demand of the emerging middle classes.
Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven by a spirit of conservatism. Conservatives believed that established, traditional institutions of state and society – like the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property, and the family – should be preserved. The representatives of the European powers (Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria) who had collectively defeated Napoleon, met at Vienna to draw up a settlement for Europe. The Congress was hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich. The delegates drew up the Treaty of Vienna of 1815 with the object of undoing most of the changes that had come about in Europe during the Napoleonic wars. The Bourbon dynasty was restored to power, and France lost the territories it had annexed under Napoleon. A series of states were set up on the boundaries of France to prevent French expansion in future.
As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their power, liberalism and nationalism came to be increasingly associated with revolution in many regions of Europe such as the Italian and German states, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Ireland, and Poland. The first upheaval took place in France in July 1830. The Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815 were now overthrown by liberal revolutionaries who installed a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head. "When France sneezes," Metternich once remarked, "the rest of Europe catches cold." The July Revolution sparked an uprising in Brussels which led to Belgium breaking away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings. Romanticism, a cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment, criticized the glorification of reason and science. Instead, it focused on emotions, intuition, and mystical feelings. Their effort was to create a sense of a shared collective heritage, a common cultural past, as the basis of a nation.
After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association with democracy and revolution. Nationalist sentiments were often mobilized by conservatives for promoting state power and achieving political domination over Europe. This can be observed in the process by which Germany and Italy came to be unified as nation-states. In Germany, nationalist feelings were widespread among middle-class Germans, who in 1848 tried to unite the different regions of the German confederation into a nation-state governed by an elected parliament. This liberal initiative was repressed by the combined forces of the monarchy and the military, supported by the large landowners (called Junkers) of Prussia. From then on, Prussia took on the leadership of the movement for national unification. Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the architect of this process, carried out with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy. 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 Versailles.
Like Germany, Italy too had a long history of political fragmentation. Italians were scattered over several dynastic states as well as the multi-national Habsburg Empire. During the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini had sought to put together a coherent programme for a unitary Italian Republic. He had also formed a secret society called Young Italy for the dissemination of his goals. The failure of revolutionary uprisings both in 1831 and 1848 meant that the mantle now fell on Sardinia-Piedmont under its ruler King Victor Emmanuel II to unify the Italian states through war. Chief Minister Cavour, who led the movement to unify the regions of Italy, was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat. Through a tactful diplomatic alliance with France engineered by Cavour, Sardinia-Piedmont succeeded in defeating the Austrian forces in 1859. Apart from regular troops, a large number of armed volunteers under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi joined the fray. In 1860, they marched into South Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and succeeded in winning the support of the local peasants in order to drive out the Spanish rulers. In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy.
While it is easy enough to represent a ruler through a portrait or a statue, how does one go about giving a face to a nation? Artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found a way out by personifying a nation. Nations were portrayed as female figures. The female form that was chosen to personify the nation did not stand for any particular woman in real life; rather it sought to give the abstract idea of the nation a concrete form. In France she was christened Marianne, a popular Christian name, which underlined the idea of a people’s nation. Her characteristics were drawn from those of Liberty and the Republic – the red cap, the tricolour, the cockade. Similarly, Germania became the allegory of the German nation. In visual representations, Germania wears a crown of oak leaves, as the German oak stands for heroism.
The rise of nationalism in Europe during the 19th century profoundly altered the continent's political landscape, culminating in the transition from empires to distinct nation-states. Triggered by the ideals of the French Revolution, concepts of collective identity, citizenship, and sovereignty gained momentum. Figures like Napoleon inadvertently spread these ideas via administrative reforms, while romanticism fostered emotional connections to cultural heritage. Through complex diplomacy and conflicts spearheaded by leaders like Bismarck and Cavour, the unification of Germany and Italy illustrated how nationalism could be harnessed by states to consolidate power, eventually setting the stage for modern European borders and subsequent geopolitical conflicts.