The Rise Of Nationalism in

Europe
 Introduction
• In 1848, Frederic Sorrieu, a French artist, prepared a series of four
print visualizing his dream of a world made up of ‘democratic and
social republic, as he called them.
• Artists of the time of the French Revolution personified Liberty as a
female figure.
• According to Sorrieu’s utopian vision, the peoples of the world are
grouped as distinct nations, identified through their flags and national
costume.
• This chapter will deal with many of the issues visualized by Sorrieu.
• During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force which
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 the place of the multi-national dynastic
empires of Europe.
• A modern state, in which a centralized power exercised
sovereign control over a clearly defined territory, had been
developing over a long period of time in Europe.
• But 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.
• This chapter will look at the diverse processes through which
nation-states and nationalism came into being in nineteenth-
century Europe.
The French Revolution And Idea Of The
Nation

Fig 4

Fig 5
 About French Revolution And The Idea
Of Nation
•The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in
1789.
•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 ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) emphasized
the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution.
•The Estates General was elected by the body of the active citizens and
renamed the National Assembly.
•Internal customs duties and dues were abolished and a uniform system of
weights and measures was adopted.
•The revolutionaries further declared that it was the mission and the destiny of
the French nation to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism.
• Students and other members of educated middle classes began setting up Jacobin
club.
• Their activities and campaigns prepared the way for the French armies which moved
into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and much of Italy in the 1790’s.
• The French armies began to carry the idea of nationalism abroad.
• Through a return to monarchy Napoleon had, no doubt, destroyed democracy in
France, but in the administrative field he had incorporated revolutionary principles in
order 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.
• Napoleon simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system and freed
peasants from serfdom and manorial dues . as in fig 5
• Transport and communication systems were improved.
• Businessmen and small-scale producers of goods, in particular, began to realize that
uniform laws, standardised weights and measures, and a common national currency
would facilitate the movement and exchange of goods and capital from one region to
another.
• In many places such as Holland and Switzerland, Brussels, Mainz, Milan, Warsaw,
the French armies were welcomed as harbingers of Liberty. As in fig 4
• It became clear that the new administrative arrangements did not go hand in hand
with political freedom
 The Making of Nationalism in Europe

• Germany, Italy and Switzerland were divided into

kingdoms, duchies and cantons whose rulers had their
autonomous territories.
• They did not see themselves as sharing a collective identity
or a common culture.
• The Habsburg Empire ruled over Austria Hungary.
• In Hungary, half of the population spoke Magyar while the
other half of the spoke a variety of dialects.
• Besides these three dominant groups, there also lived
within the boundaries of the empire.
• The only tie binding these diverse groups together was a
common allegiance to the emperor.
The Aristocracy And The New Middle
Class
 Points
• Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class on the continent.
• The members of this class were by a common way of life that cut across regional
divisions.
• Their families were often connected by ties if marriages.
• This powerful aristocracy was, however, numerically a small group. The growth of
towns and the emergence of commercial classes whose existence was based on
production for the market.
• Industrialization began in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, but in
France and parts of the German states it occurred only during the nineteenth century.
• In its wake, new social groups came into being: a working-class population, and
middle classes made up of industrialists, businessmen, professional.
• It was among the educated, liberal middle classes that ideas of national unity
following the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity.
 What did Liberal Nationalism Stand for?
• In early-nineteenth-century Europe were closely allied to the ideology of liberalism.
• The term ‘liberalism’ derives from the Latin root liber, meaning free.
• Liberalism stood for freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law.
• It emphasized the concept of government by consent.
• A constitution and representative government through parliament.
• The right to vote and to get elected was generated exclusively to property-owning
men.
• Men without property and all women were excluded from political rights.
• Women and non-propertied men and women organised opposition movements
demanding equal political rights.
• The abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.
• A merchant travelling in 1833 from Hamburg to Nuremberg to sell his goods would
have to pass through 11 customs barriers and pay a customs duty of about 5% at each
one of them.
 A New Conservation after 1815
• Following the defect of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven by a
spirit of conservatism.
• Most conservatives, however, did not propose a return to the society of pre-
revolutionary days.
• That modernization could in fact strengthen traditional institutions like the monarchy.
• A modern army, an efficient bureaucracy, a dynamic economy, the abolition of
feudalism and serfdom could strengthen the autocratic monarchies of Europe.
• In 1815, 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 Bourbon dynasty, which had been deposed during the French Revolution, was
restored to power, and France lost the territories it had annexed under Napoleon.
• German confederation of 39 states that has been set up by Napoleon was left untouched.
• Autocratic did not tolerate criticism and dissent, and sought to curb activities that
questioned the legitimacy of autocratic government
The Revolutionaries
 Points
• During the years following 1815, the fear of repression drove many liberal-
nationalists underground.
• Revolutionary at this time meant a commitment to oppose monarchical forms
and to fight for liberty and freedom.
• Giuseppe Mazzini, born in Genoa in 1807, he became a member of the secret
society of the Carbonari.
• He was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria.
• Mazzini believed that god had intended nations to be the natural units of
mankind.
• Secret societies were set up in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland.
• Metternich described him as ‘The most dangerous enemy of our social order’.
 The Age of Revolution: 1830 – 1848
• 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.
• ‘When the France sneezes’, Metternich once remarked, ‘the rest of
the Europe catches cold’.
• An event that mobilized nationalist feelings among the educated
elite across Europe was the Greek war of independence.
• Greece had been the part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth
century.
• Greeks living in exile and also from many west Europeans who had
sympathies for ancient Greek culture.
The Romantic Imagination and national
Feeling
 Points
• The development of nationalism did not come about only through wars and
territorial expansions.
• Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and
poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feeling.
• Let us look at Romanticism, a culture movement which sought to develop
a particular form of nationalist sentiments.
• Romantic artists and poet generally criticised the glorification of reason
and science and focused instead on emotions, institution and mystical
feelings.
• Other romantics were through folk song, folk poetry and folk dances that
the true spirit of the nation.
• National feelings were kept alive through music and languages.
• Karol Kurpinski, celebrated the national struggles through his operas and
music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist
symbols.
• Language too played an important role in developing nationalist
Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt
• The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe.
• The first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in population.
• In most countries there were more seekers of jobs than employment.
• Population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slum.
• Food shortage and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the
roads.
• National Assembly proclaimed a republic, granted suffrage to all adult males above 21, and
guaranteed the right to work.
• Earlier, in 1845, weavers in Silesia had lead a revolt against contractors who supplied them
raw material and gave them orders for finished textile.
• On 4 June at 2 p.m. a large crowd of weavers emerged from their homes and marched in pairs
up to the mansion of their contractors demanding higher wages.
• The contractors fled with his family to a neighboring village which, however, refused to
shelter such a person.
• He returned 24 hours later having requisitioned the army.
• In the exchange that followed, eleven weavers were shot.
 1848: The Revolution of the Liberals
• The poor, unemployment and starving peasants and workers in many European countries in the
years 1848, a revolution led by the educated middle classes was under way.
• Men and women of the liberal middle classes combined their demands for constitutionalism with
national unification.
• They drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a
parliament.
• Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected
assembly.
• While the opposition of the aristocracy and military became stronger, the social basis of
parliament eroded.
• The issue of extending political rights to women was a controversial one within the liberal
movement.
• Women had formed their own political associations, founded newspaper and taken part in
political meeting and demonstrations.
• Women were admitted only as observers to stand in the visitors’ gallery.
• Monarchs were beginning to realize that the cycles if revolution and repression could be ended
by granting concessions to the liberal-nationalist revolutionaries.
The Making of German and Italy
 Germany – can the Army be the Architect
of a National
• After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association with democracy
and revolution.
• This can be observed in the process by which Germany and Italy came to be unified
as nation-states.
• Nationalist feelings were widespread among middle-class Germans.
• This liberal initiative to nation-building was, however, repressed by the combined
forces of the monarchy and the military, supported by the large landowners of Prussia.
• Prussia took on the leadership of the movement.
• Three wars overseen years-with Austria, Denmark, and France-ended in Prussian
victory and completed the process of unification.
• The nation-building process in Germany had demonstrated the dominance of Prussian
state power.
• The new state placed a strong emphasis on modernising the currency, banking, legal
and judicial systems in Germany.
 Italy Unified
•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.
•Italy was divided into seven states.
•Italian language had not acquired one common form and still had many regional and local
variations.
•Giuseppe Mazzini had sought to put together a coherent programme for a unitary Italian
Republic.
•Young Italy for the dissemination of his goals.
•The failure of revolutionary uprising both in 1831 and 1848 meant that the mantle now fell on
Sadinia-Piedmont under its ruler King Victor Emmanuel II to unify the Italian states through war.
•Italy offered them the possibility of economic development and political dominance.
•Italy was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat.
•Italian population, among whom rates of illiteracy were high, remained blissfully unaware of
liberal-nationalist ideology.
 The strange case of Britain
• The model of the nation or the nation-state, some scholars have
argued, is Great Britain.
• It was the result of a long-drawn-out process.
• There was no British nation prior to the eighteenth century.
• ‘United Kingdom of great Britain’ meant, in effect, that England was
able to impose its influence on Scotland.
• The British parliament was henceforth dominated by its English
members.
• Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801.
• British flag, the national anthem, the English language – were actively
promoted and the older nations survived only as subordinate partners
on this union.
 Visualizing the Nation
• While it was easy enough to represent a ruler through
a portrait or a statue.
• In other words they represented a country as if it were
a person.
• Nations were then portrayed as a female figure.
• The female figures became an allegory of the nation.
• Christened Marianne, a popular Christian name,
which underlined the idea of people’s nation.
 Nationalism and Imperialism
• By the quarter of the nineteenth century nationalism no longer retained its
idealistic liberal-democratic sentiment of the first half of the century, but
became a narrow creed with limited ends.
• The most serious source of nationalists tension in Europe after 1871 was
the area called the Balkans.
• The Balkans was a region of geographical and ethnic variation.
• One by one its European subjects nationalities broke away from its control
and declared independence.
• The Balkan area became an era of intense conflict.
• The Balkan states were jealous of each other and each hoped to gain more
territory at the expense of each other.
• But the idea that societies should be organized into ‘nation-states’ came to
be accepted as natural and universal.
 Summary
•  It is a belief system which instills a sense of
common identity among the members of a
nation. National flag, national symbol,
national anthem, etc. play an important role in
developing and strengthening the idea of
nationalism.
 THANKS YOU

Name- Raj Singh

Class-X-B
Roll no-37
Subject-SST
Art Integrated Activity