Rise of Nationalism in Europe Class 10 PPT Notes PDF (Ch 1)

1. The French Revolution and the Idea of the Nation
2. The Making of Nationalism in Europe
3. The Age of Revolutions, 1830 to 1848
4. The Making of Germany and Italy
5. Visualising the Nation
6. Nationalism and Imperialism

• In 1848 the French artist Frédéric Sorrieu made a series of four prints visualising a world of democratic and social Republics
• Peoples of Europe and America, men and women of all ages and classes, march towards the Statue of Liberty, who holds the Torch of Enlightenment and the Charter of the Rights of Man
• A shattered crown and sceptre on the ground stand for the end of absolute monarchy
• The peoples are grouped as distinct nations, known by their flags and costumes. The United States and Switzerland (already nation-states) lead, then France, then Germany. Germany was not yet united in 1848, so the flag showed their hope
• Christ, saints and angels in the sky stand for fraternity among nations
• The vision was utopian: an ideal society unlikely to actually exist

• A nation is not made only by a common language, race, religion or territory
• A nation is a long shared past of endeavour, sacrifice and devotion; it needs common glories in the past and a common will in the present
• A nation is a large-scale solidarity, and its existence is a “daily plebiscite”. A plebiscite is a direct vote to accept or reject a proposal
• Nations guarantee liberty: one master over the world would end freedom

Common identity was not there forever: it was forged through struggles and by common people. In the 19th century, nationalism replaced empires with nation-states in Europe.

France was a territorial state under an absolute monarch, with centralised, militarised, repressive rule and no restraints. The Revolution transferred sovereignty from the monarchy to the citizens. Now the people constituted the nation and shaped its destiny.

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

• France’s mission was to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism
• Educated middle-class students set up Jacobin clubs in many cities
• With the revolutionary wars in the 1790s, the French armies moved into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy and carried nationalism abroad

• Napoleon ended democracy but kept revolutionary ideas to run things efficiently
• The Civil Code of 1804 (the Napoleonic Code) ended 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

• Simplified the administrative divisions
• Abolished the feudal system and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues
• Removed guild restrictions in towns
• Improved transport and communication
• Uniform laws, standard weights and measures and a common currency eased trade and the movement of capital

• At first the French armies were welcomed as harbingers of liberty in Holland, Switzerland, Brussels, Mainz, Milan and Warsaw
• Enthusiasm turned to hostility, because the people saw no real political freedom
• The burdens were increased taxation, censorship and forced conscription into the French armies

• Germany, Italy and Switzerland were split into kingdoms, duchies and cantons
• Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies of diverse peoples who did not share a common identity
• The Habsburg Empire (Austria-Hungary) was a patchwork of regions and peoples

The only tie binding them was a common allegiance to the Emperor.

• The landed aristocracy was the dominant class but small in number, with a common lifestyle: country estates and town-houses, and they spoke French
• The majority of people were peasants. In the West land was farmed by tenants and small owners, and in Eastern and Central Europe vast estates were worked by serfs
• Industrialisation began in England in the later 18th century and reached France and the German states in the 19th century
• New groups appeared: a working class and the middle classes (industrialists, businessmen and professionals), who were smaller in Central and Eastern Europe till the late 19th century
• Nationalism and liberal ideas became popular among the educated, liberal middle classes

• Politically, liberalism stood for government by consent, the end of autocracy and clerical privileges, a constitution and representative government, and the inviolability of private property
• Equality before the law did not mean universal suffrage: only property-owning men could vote, and non-propertied men and all women were excluded
• Only briefly, under the Jacobins, did all adult males vote. The Napoleonic Code reduced women to the status of a minor
• Suffrage is the right to vote

• Economically, liberalism wanted free markets and no state restrictions on the movement of goods and capital
• The German states had 39 members, each with its own currency, weights and measures. A merchant travelling in 1833 from Hamburg to Nuremberg crossed 11 customs barriers and paid a customs duty of about 5% at each
• In 1834 the Zollverein (a customs union) was formed by Prussia, which cut the currencies from over 30 to two
• Railways boosted mobility, and this was a wave of economic nationalism

• After Napoleon’s defeat (1815), European governments followed the spirit of conservatism: they wanted to preserve the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property and the family
• Conservatives did not propose a return to the pre-1789 days, and modernisation (a modern army, an efficient bureaucracy, a dynamic economy, the end of feudalism) could strengthen monarchies
• Conservatism stresses tradition and established institutions, and prefers gradual change

Representatives of Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria, who had defeated Napoleon, met at Vienna in 1815, hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich. They drew up the Treaty of Vienna, whose aim was to undo most of the changes of the Napoleonic wars.

• The conservative regimes were autocratic: they did not tolerate criticism or dissent, and imposed censorship on newspapers, books, plays and songs
• The memory of the French Revolution still inspired liberals, and the freedom of the press became a major issue
• Fear of repression drove liberal-nationalists underground. Secret societies trained revolutionaries and spread their ideas. To be a revolutionary meant to oppose the monarchies and fight for liberty, and most also wanted to create nation-states

• Born in Genoa in 1805; he joined the secret society of the Carbonari
• Exiled in 1831; he founded Young Italy (in Marseilles) and Young Europe (in Berne)
• He believed that nations were the natural units of mankind, and that Italy had to be one republic
• Secret societies on his model spread to Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland
• Metternich called him “the most dangerous enemy of our social order”

• The Bourbon kings were overthrown and a constitutional monarchy was set up under Louis Philippe
• Metternich said: “When France sneezes, the rest of Europe catches cold”
• The July Revolution sparked an uprising in Brussels, and Belgium broke away from the Netherlands

• Greece had been under the Ottoman Empire since the 15th century
• The struggle began in 1821, supported by exiled Greeks and West Europeans
• The poet Lord Byron organised funds, fought, and died of fever in 1824
• The Treaty of Constantinople (1832) recognised Greece as an independent nation

• Nationalism grew through culture: art, poetry, stories and music
• Romanticism criticised reason and science, and focused on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings
• Its aim was a shared collective heritage and a common cultural past as the basis of a nation
• Herder claimed that true German culture lived among the common people, das volk. Folk songs, poetry and dances expressed the volksgeist (spirit of the nation)
• The Grimm Brothers collected folktales (first collection 1812) and built a German dictionary. They saw folk culture as a pure German spirit and a tool against French rule

• Poland was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, but national feeling survived through music and language
• Kurpinski used operas and folk dances (the polonaise and the mazurka) as nationalist symbols
• Russia imposed the Russian language. After the 1831 rebellion, the clergy used Polish as an act of resistance, and many priests were sent to Siberia. Polish became a symbol of struggle

• The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe
• A huge population rise meant more job-seekers than jobs, and people migrated to overcrowded slums
• Small town producers were crushed by cheap machine-made imports from England
• Peasants were burdened by feudal dues, and rising food prices led to pauperism

• Paris, 1848: food shortage and unemployment brought people onto the streets. Barricades were erected, Louis Philippe fled and a Republic was proclaimed, with suffrage for all adult males above 21, the right to work and national workshops
• Silesia, 1845: weavers revolted against the contractors who cut their pay. The army was called in, and eleven weavers were shot

The educated middle classes led a political revolution demanding constitutionalism and national unification. On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives took their places in the Frankfurt Parliament, held in the Church of St Paul. They drafted a constitution for a German nation: a monarchy under a parliament.

1. The crown was offered to Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, and he rejected it
2. He joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly
3. The opposition of the aristocracy and the military grew stronger
4. The middle-class parliament resisted the demands of workers and artisans and lost their support
5. Troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband

• Women formed associations, founded newspapers and joined meetings and demonstrations
• Yet they were denied suffrage and admitted only as observers at the Frankfurt Parliament
• Carl Welcker argued for separate spheres for women, against equality
• A feminist believes in the social, economic and political equality of the genders

• The cycle was revolution, then repression, then stability
• Conservatives suppressed the 1848 movements but could not restore the old order, so monarchs granted concessions
• Serfdom and bonded labour were abolished in the Habsburg lands and in Russia
• The Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867

• After 1848 nationalism moved away from democracy, and conservatives used it for state power
• The 1848 liberal attempt was crushed by the monarchy, the military and the Junkers (landed aristocrats) of Prussia. Prussia then led unification
• Chief Minister Otto von Bismarck was the architect, using the Prussian army and bureaucracy
• Three wars over seven years, with Austria, Denmark and France, were all won by Prussia
• On 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, William I was proclaimed German Emperor
• The new state modernised currency, banking, legal and judicial systems, and Prussian measures became a model for the rest of Germany

• Italy had a long history of political fragmentation. By the mid-19th century it was divided into seven states
• The north was under the Austrian Habsburgs, the centre was ruled by the Pope, and the south was under the Bourbon kings of Spain
• Only Sardinia-Piedmont had an Italian princely house
• Even the Italian language had no single common form

• Mazzini sought a unitary Italian republic, but the 1831 and 1848 uprisings failed
• The task fell to Sardinia-Piedmont under King Victor Emmanuel II
• Chief Minister Cavour was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat. Through a diplomatic alliance with France, Sardinia-Piedmont defeated Austria in 1859

• In 1860 volunteers under Giuseppe Garibaldi marched into South Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and won the support of the peasants. Many peasants had never heard of Italia, and some thought “La Talia” was the king’s wife
• In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed King of united Italy
• Garibaldi (1807 to 1882) was a sailor in the merchant navy who met Mazzini in 1833 and joined Young Italy, and was exiled to South America until 1848. His volunteers (the Red Shirts) grew to about 30,000 in 1860. In 1867 he marched on Rome but lost to French and Papal troops. In 1870 France withdrew during the war with Prussia, and the Papal States joined Italy

• The British nation-state grew slowly, not through a sudden revolution
• Before the 18th century the identities were ethnic: English, Welsh, Scot and Irish (a common racial, tribal or cultural origin that a community identifies with)
• The English nation grew in wealth and power, and the English parliament, which took power in 1688, forged a nation-state with England at its centre
• The Act of Union (1707) joined England and Scotland as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Scotland’s culture was suppressed. The Highlanders were forbidden to speak Gaelic or wear their dress
• In Ireland, England backed the Protestants. After Wolfe Tone’s failed revolt (1798), Ireland was forcibly joined to the UK in 1801
• British symbols were promoted: the Union Jack, the national anthem and the English language. The older nations survived only as subordinate partners

It is easy to show a ruler, but how to picture a whole nation? Artists personified the nation as a female figure. She was not a real woman but an allegory: an abstract idea shown through a person or thing. French Revolution allegories include Liberty (a red cap and a broken chain) and Justice (blindfolded, with scales).

• In France the nation was named Marianne, a popular Christian name
• Her features came from Liberty and the Republic: the red cap, the tricolour and the cockade
• Statues of Marianne stood in public squares to remind people of unity, and her image appeared on coins and stamps

• By the late 19th century nationalism lost its idealistic liberal-democratic spirit and became a narrow creed with limited ends
• Nationalist groups grew intolerant of each other and ready for war
• The major powers manipulated subject peoples for their imperialist aims

• The Balkans included Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro. Their people were broadly known as the Slavs, and much of the region was under the Ottoman Empire
• Romantic nationalism plus the decline of the Ottoman Empire made the region explosive
• Subject nationalities broke away and used history to claim past independence

• The Balkan states were jealous of each other, each wanting more territory
• The region became the scene of big-power rivalry over trade, colonies and military might. Russia, Germany, England and Austro-Hungary each tried to extend control
• This led to a series of wars and finally to the First World War (1914)

Colonised peoples began to oppose imperial domination. Their anti-imperial movements were nationalist, struggling for independent nation-states. European nationalism was not simply copied; each people built its own variety. The idea of organising societies into nation-states became accepted as natural.

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