Chapter 1: The Rise of Nationalism in Europe (History)

(a) Giuseppe Mazzini

• An Italian revolutionary, born in Genoa in 1807, and a member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
• After being exiled in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria, he founded Young Italy in Marseilles and then Young Europe in Berne, with like-minded young people from Poland, France, Italy and the German states.
• He believed that God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind, so Italy could not remain a patchwork of small states; it had to be a unified republic.
• Metternich called him "the most dangerous enemy of our social order".

(b) Count Camillo de Cavour

• The chief minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, who led the movement to unify Italy.
• He was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat; like many educated Italians he spoke French better than Italian.
• Through a tactful diplomatic alliance with France, he helped Sardinia-Piedmont defeat the Austrian forces in 1859. Volunteers under Garibaldi then joined the struggle, and in 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy.

(c) The Greek war of independence

• Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century. A struggle for independence began in 1821.
• Nationalists in Greece got support from Greeks living in exile and from many West Europeans who admired ancient Greek culture.
• Poets and artists praised Greece as the cradle of European civilisation; the English poet Lord Byron organised funds and went to fight in the war, where he died of fever in 1824.
• The Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation. The war inspired nationalist feeling among educated elites across Europe.

(d) Frankfurt parliament

• In 1848, middle-class professionals, businessmen and artisans from the German regions voted to form an all-German National Assembly.
• Its 831 elected representatives met on 18 May 1848 in the Church of St Paul in Frankfurt and drafted a constitution for a German nation headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament.
• When they offered the crown to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the assembly.
• The parliament was dominated by the middle classes, who resisted the demands of workers and artisans and so lost their support. In the end troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband on 31 May 1849.

(e) The role of women in nationalist struggles

• Women took an active part in the liberal-nationalist movements: they formed their own political associations, founded newspapers and took part in political meetings and demonstrations.
• Yet they were denied suffrage (the right to vote) during the election of the Frankfurt Assembly; women were admitted only as observers in the visitors' gallery.
• Women were also used as allegories of the nation, such as Marianne in France and Germania in Germany.

See the five notes above.

• The ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) stressed a united community with equal rights under a constitution.
• A new French flag, the tricolour, replaced the former royal standard.
• The Estates General was elected by active citizens and renamed the National Assembly.
• New hymns were composed, oaths taken and martyrs commemorated, all in the name of the nation.
• A centralised administrative system was set up, with uniform laws for all citizens.
• Internal customs duties and dues were abolished, and a uniform system of weights and measures was adopted.
• Regional dialects were discouraged and French, as spoken and written in Paris, became the common language of the nation.

They introduced the ideas of la patrie and le citoyen, a new tricolour flag, the National Assembly, new hymns and oaths, uniform laws, weights and measures, and French as the common language.

Marianne was the female allegory of the French nation, and Germania the female allegory of the German nation.

• Marianne's characteristics were drawn from those of liberty and the republic: the red cap, the tricolour and the cockade. Her statues were put up in public squares, and her image was marked on coins and stamps, so that people would constantly be reminded of the nation and identify with it.
• Germania wears a crown of oak leaves, since the German oak stands for heroism. She was shown with a sword and a shield.

Importance: artists in the nineteenth century personified the nation as a female figure to give the abstract idea of a nation a concrete form. These images became symbols of national unity and of ideals such as liberty, justice and strength, and helped people feel that they belonged to one nation.

They were female allegories of France and Germany; portraying the nation as a woman, with symbols of liberty, heroism and strength, gave the abstract idea of the nation a concrete, emotional form that united people.

• 1848: liberal middle-class Germans tried to unite the German Confederation into a nation-state governed by an elected parliament (the Frankfurt Parliament). This was repressed by the monarchy and the military, supported by the large landowners (the Junkers) of Prussia.
• After that, Prussia took the leadership of the movement for national unification. Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the architect of the process, which he carried out with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy.
• Three wars over seven years, with Austria, Denmark and France, ended in Prussian victory and completed the unification.
• In January 1871, the Prussian king William I was proclaimed German Emperor in a ceremony held at the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.
• The new state placed a strong emphasis on modernising the currency, banking, legal and judicial systems.

After the failure of 1848, Prussia under Bismarck united Germany through three wars (with Denmark, Austria and France), and William I was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles in 1871.

The Civil Code of 1804 (the Napoleonic Code) was applied to the regions under French control.

• It did away with privileges based on birth, established equality before the law and secured the right to property.
• In the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, he simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues.
• In the towns, guild restrictions were removed.
• Transport and communication systems were improved.
• Peasants, artisans, workers and new businessmen enjoyed a new freedom; businessmen and small producers began to realise that uniform laws, standardised weights and measures, and a common national currency would help the movement and exchange of goods and capital.

Through the Napoleonic Code of 1804 he ended privileges of birth, ensured equality before law and the right to property, abolished feudalism, removed guild restrictions and improved transport and communication.

In 1848, while the poor, unemployed and starving peasants and workers revolted in many parts of Europe, a revolution led by the educated middle classes was also under way. In countries such as Germany, Italy, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, men and women of the liberal middle classes combined their demands for constitutionalism with national unification. They wanted to create nation-states based on parliamentary principles: a constitution, freedom of the press and freedom of association. This is the revolution of the liberals.

Ideas supported by the liberals:

• Political: government by consent; an end to autocracy and clerical privileges; a constitution and representative government through parliament; individual liberty and equality of all before the law. (In practice, they gave the vote only to men who owned property.)
• Social: an end to privileges based on birth; freedom of the individual; the abolition of serfdom and bonded labour.
• Economic: freedom of markets; the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital; a common currency and uniform weights and measures. (For example, the Prussian-led customs union, the Zollverein, of 1834 abolished tariff barriers among most German states.)

It was the middle-class movement of 1848 for constitutional nation-states; the liberals wanted representative government, equality before law, an end to privileges of birth and free markets without trade barriers.

• Romanticism: Romantic artists and poets criticised the glorification of reason and science and focused instead on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings. They tried to create a sense of a shared collective heritage as the basis of a nation. The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people, the das volk, and popularised folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances.
• Language: in Poland, which had been partitioned and had no state, language became a weapon of national resistance. After the Russian occupation, Polish was forced out of schools and Russian imposed, so the clergy in Poland used Polish for church gatherings and religious instruction, and refused to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.
• Music and folk tales: Karol Kurpinski celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols. The Grimm brothers collected German folk tales, which they saw as part of a battle against French domination and for German national identity.

Romanticism (Herder and das volk), the use of the Polish language as a weapon against Russian rule, and folk music and tales (Kurpinski, the Grimm brothers) all built nationalist feeling.

Germany

• The middle-class attempt of 1848 to unite the German Confederation under an elected parliament failed.
• Prussia then led the unification under Otto von Bismarck, using its army and bureaucracy. Three wars over seven years, against Austria, Denmark and France, ended in Prussian victory.
• In 1871 the Prussian king William I was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles, and the new state modernised its currency, banking and legal systems.

Italy

• Italy was divided into seven states, of which only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house. The north was under Austria, the centre under the Pope and the south under the Bourbon kings of Spain.
• In the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini worked for a unitary Italian republic through his secret society Young Italy, but uprisings in 1831 and 1848 failed.
• Then Cavour, the chief minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, through a diplomatic alliance with France, defeated Austria in 1859. In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi and his armed volunteers (the Red Shirts) marched into South Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and drove out the Spanish rulers.
• In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy.

Germany was unified by Prussia under Bismarck through three wars (1871); Italy was unified by Sardinia-Piedmont under Cavour, helped by Mazzini's ideas and Garibaldi's volunteers (1861).

• In Britain the formation of the nation-state was not the result of a sudden upheaval or revolution; it was the result of a long-drawn-out process.
• Before the eighteenth century there was no British nation. The people of the British Isles had their own ethnic identities: English, Welsh, Scot or Irish.
• As the English nation steadily grew in wealth, importance and power, it extended its influence over the other nations of the islands.
• The English parliament seized power from the monarchy in 1688. Through the Act of Union of 1707 between England and Scotland, the "United Kingdom of Great Britain" was formed, and England could impose its influence on Scotland. Scotland's distinctive culture and political institutions were systematically suppressed.
• Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801 after a failed Catholic revolt, and was deeply divided between Catholics and Protestants.
• A new "British nation" was forged through the spread of a dominant English culture. Its symbols (the British flag, the Union Jack, the national anthem "God Save Our Noble King" and the English language) were actively promoted, while the older nations survived only as subordinate partners.

In Britain the nation-state formed through a long, gradual process (the Act of Union 1707 and Ireland's union in 1801), led by a dominant England, rather than through revolution or war.

• The Balkans was a region of great geographical and ethnic variety, including modern Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro. Its inhabitants were broadly known as the Slavs.
• A large part of the Balkans was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The spread of the ideas of romantic nationalism, together with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, made the region very explosive.
• One by one, the Balkan nationalities broke away from Ottoman rule and declared independence, using history to claim that they had once been independent and had been subjugated by foreign powers.
• The Balkan states were fiercely jealous of each other and each wanted more territory at the expense of the others.
• At the same time, the big European powers, Russia, Germany, England and Austro-Hungary, were competing for trade, colonies and naval and military might. Each tried to counter the others' hold over the Balkans.
• This led to a series of wars in the region and finally contributed to the First World War (1914).

Rising nationalism among the many Slav peoples, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, rivalry among the Balkan states, and competition among the big European powers made the Balkans explosive.

Here is an outline for the project, using India as an example.

• Pictures: Abanindranath Tagore's painting of Bharat Mata (1905) shows the nation as a calm, ascetic woman holding a book, sheaves of paddy, a piece of white cloth and a garland. Later images showed Bharat Mata with a trishul or standing beside a lion and an elephant.
• Flags: the Swadeshi flag of 1905 (red, green and yellow, with eight lotuses for eight provinces and a crescent moon), and Gandhiji's tricolour of 1921 (red, green and white with a spinning wheel in the centre).
• Songs: Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Vande Mataram (in Anandamath) and Rabindranath Tagore's songs during the Swadeshi movement.
• Another country: in Vietnam, poems, plays and the image of the lotus and the national flag were used against French rule.

Difference from European examples: in Europe the symbols (Marianne, Germania) usually stood for liberty, the republic or military strength. In India and other colonies they were linked with the anti-colonial struggle: spiritual and religious ideas (Bharat Mata as a goddess), folk traditions, and symbols of self-reliance such as the spinning wheel.

For example, in India Bharat Mata, the Swadeshi and tricolour flags and Vande Mataram were nationalist symbols; unlike European symbols of liberty and military power, they were tied to the anti-colonial struggle, religion and self-reliance.