Nationalism in Europe

Meaning of Nationalism:

             Nationalism is the idea of a sense of common identity and a sense of belongingness to a particular geographical area. Apart from this it is also a sense of attachment to a particular culture. It should be kept in mind that culture encompasses a variety of factors, like language, cuisine, costumes, folklores, etc.

The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

            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 place of the multi-national dynastic empires of Europe.

Nation state

            French philosopher Ernst Renan (1823-92) criticises the notion suggested by others that a nation is formed by a common language, race, religion, or territory. According to him 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.

The French Revolution (1789) and the Idea of the Nation:-

            The first clear expression of nationalism observed during French Revolution. French Revolution led to the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens.

            Steps taken by French revolutionaries to create a sense of collective identity amongst

            the French people.

            (1) The ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen).

            (2) A new French flag, the tricolor, replaced former royal flag

            (3) New hymns were composed, oaths taken and martyrs commemorated.

            (4) A centralised administrative system, uniform laws.

            (5) Internal customs duties and dues were abolished and a uniform system of weights and measures was adopted.

            (6) Regional dialects were discouraged and French, as it was spoken and written in Paris, became the common language of the nation.

Effects of French Revolution on Other Countries:-

            In 1797 Napoleon invades Italy; Napoleonic wars begin. French armies which moved into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and much of Italy in the 1790s, carried the idea of nationalism abroad.

Napoleon:-

            In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of France. He set out to conquer neighbouring European countries, dispossessing dynasties and creating kingdoms where he placed members of his family. Napoleon saw his role as a moderniser of Europe. He introduced the Civil Code of 1804 – usually known as the Napoleonic Code.

            This Code was exported to the regions under French control. In the Dutch Republic, in Switzerland, in Italy and Germany, Napoleon simplified administrative divisions.

           

            Main features

®       Napoleon abolished the feudal system and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues.

®       In the towns, guild restrictions were removed.

           

®       Uniform laws, standardised weights and measures, and a common national currency

®       Initially, many saw Napoleon as a liberator who would bring freedom for the people. But the initial enthusiasm soon turned to hostility, as it became clear that the new administrative arrangements did not go hand in hand with political freedom. Increased taxation, censorship, forced conscription into the French armies required to conquer the rest of Europe, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of the administrative changes. He was finally defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Many of his measures that carried the revolutionary ideas of liberty and modern laws to other parts of Europe had an impact on people long after Napoleon had left.

The making of nationalism in Europe

®       In the mid-eighteenth-century modern day Germany, Italy and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies ( territory ruled by duke ) and cantons ( small administrative division).

®       Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies.

            Example: The Habsburg Empire that ruled over Austria-Hungary, for example, was a patchwork of many different regions and peoples. It included the Alpine regions – the Tyrol, Austria and the Sudetenland – as well as Bohemia, where the aristocracy was predominantly German-speaking. It also included the Italian-speaking provinces of Lombardy and Venetia. In Hungary, half of the population spoke Magyar while the other half spoke a variety of dialects. 

In Galicia, the aristocracy spoke Polish. Besides these three dominant groups, there also lived within the boundaries of the empire, a mass of subject peasant peoples – Bohemians and Slovaks to the north, Slovenes in Carniola, Croats to the south, and Roumans to the east in Transylvania. Such differences did not easily promote a sense of political unity. The only tie binding these diverse groups together was a common allegiance to the emperor.

            Society of Europe

®       (1) Aristocracy (The highest class in certain societies, esp. those holding hereditary titles or offices) The Aristocracy Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class on the continent. They owned estates in the countryside and also town-houses. This powerful aristocracy was, however, numerically a small group.                                   

®       (2) Peasantry

            The majority of the population was made up of the peasantry. To the west, the bulk of the land was farmed by tenants and small owners, while in Eastern and Central Europe the pattern of landholding was characterised by vast estates which were cultivated by serfs.

®       (3) New Middle Class

            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 whose existence was based on production for the market. In Central and Eastern Europe these groups were smaller in number till late nineteenth century. It was among the educated, liberal middle classes that ideas of national unity following the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity.

Idea of Liberal Nationalism

®       Ideas of national unity in early-nineteenth-century Europe were closely allied to the ideology of liberalism. The term ‘liberalism’ derives from the Latin root liber, meaning free.

®       (1) For the new middle classes liberalism stood for freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law. Politically, it emphasised the concept of government by consent.     

®       (2) 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.

®       Example:

            Formation of Zollverein

            Napoleon’s administrative measures had created out of countless small   principalities a confederation of 39 states in German region. Each of these possessed its own currency, and weights and measures. A merchant travelling in 1833 from Hamburg         to Nuremberg to sell his goods would have had to pass through 11 customs barriers and pay a customs duty of about 5 per cent at each one of them. Such conditions were viewed as obstacles to economic exchange and growth by the new commercial classes, who argued for the creation of a unified economic territory allowing the unhindered movement of goods, people and capital.

             In 1834, a customs union or Zollverein was formed at the initiative of Prussia and joined by most of the German states. The union abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two. The creation of a network of railways further stimulated mobility, harnessing economic interests to national unification. A wave of economic nationalism strengthened the wider nationalist sentiments growing at the time.

A New Conservatism after 1815

®       Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven by a spirit of conservatism.

Basic philosophy

®       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 Vienna Congress

®       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 main intention was to restore the monarchies that had been overthrown by Napoleon, and create a new conservative order in Europe.  The Congress was hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich.

Main features of the treaty of Vienna 1815 (Austria)

®       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.

®       A series of states were set up on the boundaries of France to prevent French expansion in future.

®       The kingdom of the Netherlands, which included Belgium, was set up in the north and Genoa was added to Piedmont in the south.

®       Prussia was given important new territories on its western frontiers, while Austria was given control of northern Italy

®       The German confederation of 39 states that had been set up by Napoleon was left untouched. In the east,

            Russia was given part of Poland while Prussia was given a portion of Saxony.

The Revolutionaries

®       During the years following 1815, the fear of repression drove many liberal-nationalists underground. Secret societies sprang up in many European states to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas. To be revolutionary at this time meant a commitment to oppose monarchical forms that had been established after the Vienna Congress, and to fight for liberty and freedom. Most of these revolutionaries also saw the creation of nation-states as a necessary part of this struggle for freedom.

Giuseppe Mazzini

The Age of Revolutions: 1830-1848

July Revolution in France (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.

Greek War of Independence (1821-32)

The revolution of 1848 in France

®       In the year 1848 food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads. Louis Philippe was forced to flee. A National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, granted suffrage to all adult males above 21.

Revolt by weavers of Silesia (Poland)

®       Earlier, in 1845, weavers in Silesia had led a revolt against contractors who supplied them raw material and gave them orders for finished textiles but drastically reduced their payments.

Frankfurt Parliament (1848)

Final Outcome

®       Though conservative forces were able to suppress liberal movements in 1848, they could not restore the old order. Monarchs were beginning to realise that the cycles of revolution and repression could only be ended by granting concessions to the liberal-nationalist revolutionaries. Hence, in the years after 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce the changes that had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815. Thus serfdom and bonded labour were abolished both in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia. The Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867.

The Romantic Imagination and National Feeling

            Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings.

             Romantic artists and poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and science and focused instead 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.

            Other Romantics such as the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people – das volk. It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of the nation (volksgeist) was popularised. So collecting and recording these forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.

            The emphasis on vernacular language and the collection of local folklore was not just to recover an ancient national spirit, but also to carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate. This was especially so in the case of Poland, which had been partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century by the Great Powers – Russia, Prussia and Austria. Even though Poland no longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept alive through music and language. Karol Kurpinski, for example, celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.

Role of Language- Case of Poland

            Language too played an important role in developing nationalist sentiments. After Russian occupation, the Polish language was forced out of schools and the Russian language was imposed everywhere. In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place which was ultimately crushed. Following this, many members of the clergy in Poland began to use language as a weapon of national resistance. Polish was used for Church gatherings and all religious instruction. As a result, a large number of priests and bishops were put in jail or sent to Siberia by the Russian authorities as punishment for their refusal to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.

Unification of Germany

          

Unification of Italy

            Italians were scattered over several dynastic states as well as the multi-national Habsburg Empire. During the middle of the nineteenth century, Italy was divided into seven states, of which only one, Sardinia-Piedmont, was ruled by an Italian princely house.

            The north was under Austrian Habsburgs, the centre was ruled by the Pope and the southern regions were under the domination of the Bourbon kings of Spain.

The Strange Case of Britain

            General information

            (1) England – only England

            (2) Great Britain – England + Scotland + Wales

            (3) United Kingdom - England + Scotland + Wales + Northern Ireland

           

          

  

            A new ‘British nation’ was forged through the propagation of a dominant English culture. The symbols of the new Britain – the British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble King), the English language – were actively promoted and the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union.

Visualising the Nation

            Artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found a way out by personifying a nation. In other words they represented a country as if it were a person. Nations were then portrayed as female figures.

            Example

            France- Marianne

            Germany- Germinia

Negative Effects of Nationalism

®       By the last quarter of the nineteenth century nationalist groups became increasingly intolerant of each other and ever ready to go to war. The major European powers, in turn, manipulated the nationalist aspirations of the subject peoples in Europe to further their own imperialist aims.

®       The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871 was the area called the Balkans.

Effect on Rest of the World

            Nationalism, aligned with imperialism, led Europe to disaster in 1914. But meanwhile, many countries in the world which had been colonised by the European powers in the nineteenth century began to oppose imperial domination. The anti-imperial movements that developed everywhere were nationalist, in the sense that they all struggled to form independent nation-states, and were inspired by a sense of collective national unity, forged in confrontation with imperialism. European ideas of nationalism were nowhere replicated, for people everywhere developed their own specific variety of nationalism. But the idea that societies should be organised into ‘nation-states’ came to be accepted as natural and universal.