The Making of Nationalism in Europe - Chapter 1 The Rise of Nationalism in Europe Class 10 History
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The Making of Nationalism in Europe - Chapter 1 The Rise of Nationalism in Europe Class 10 History
In the mid-eighteenth century, there were no nation states in Europe. Whole Europe was divided into kingdoms ruled by monarchs who were fighting against each other for capturing other territories. The people living in different empires did not share a common identity and history. For example let look at the Habsburg Empire.
• This empire ruled over Austria-Hungary in which the Tyrol, Austria and the Sudetenland part, high class people majorly speak German.
• The provinces of Lombardy and Venetia speak Italian. In Hungary, half of the population spoke Magyar while the other half spoke a variety of dialects.
• In Galicia, high class people spoke Polish.
• There is only one common thing that is they are part of an empire ruled by a single emperor.
The Aristocracy
• Landed aristocracy was present all over Europe at that time. These were dominant class in Europe both socially and politically.
• They owned estates in the countryside and also town-houses and also were numerically a small group.
• They spoke French for purposes of diplomacy and in high society and their families were often connected by ties of marriage.
The Peasants
• Tenants and a small land owners who worked as serfs are called peasants. They form majority of the population.
• In the west part of Europe, land was cultivated by tenants and small farmers.
• In Central and Eastern part of Europe, vast area of lands were owned by the lords and were cultivated by serfs.
Middle Class
• There is a new class merging in the mid-eighteenth-century due to industrialisation which happened during second half of the eighteenth century and nineteenth century, a working-class population, and middle classes made up of industrialists, businessmen, professionals.
• These groups were smaller in number till late nineteenth century. They were educated and liberal and popularised ideas of national unity and abolition of aristocracy.
What did Liberal Nationalism Stand for?
• Liberalism is an ideology which promotes freedom and equality.
• During nineteenth century Europe, the idea of nationalism was linked with the ideology of liberalism. For the new middle classes liberalism stood for freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law.
• Politically, it means government by consent. It mean a representative government through the parliament abided by a constitution. This idea came from the French revolution.
→ In the revolutionary France, the right to vote and to get elected was granted exclusively to property-owning men. Men without property and all women were excluded from political rights.
→ It was only under Jacobin government that all adult males enjoy suffrage means right to vote.
→ But after Napoleon rose to power, he introduced Napoleonic code and once again denied right to vote and reduced women to the status of a minor making them subject to the authority of fathers and husbands.
→ During the period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women and non-propertied men organised movements demanding equal political rights.
• Economically, liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.
→ For example, In the first half of the nineteenth century, German-speaking regions, a confederation of 39 states – each state had its own currency, custom barriers, weight measures proved obstacles to economic exchange and growth. In 1834, a customs union or zollverein was formed which abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two.
Conservatism after 1815
• After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 conservatism became a dominant political philosophy.
• Conservatism is political philosophy that traditional institutions of state and society – like the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property and the family should be preserved.
• They preferred gradual development instead of quick change.
• Those people who believed in these were called conservatives.
• Most of conservatives did not wanted a society which was before the revolution instead with the experiences of rule of Napoleon they believed that modernisation could in fact strengthen traditional institutions like the monarchy because:
→ Now they could raise a modern army, an efficient bureaucracy and dynamic economy.
→ The abolition of feudalism and serfdom could strengthen the autocratic monarchies of Europe and made state power more effective and strong.
• In 1815, representatives of the European powers – Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria who collectively defeated Napoleon, met and drew up the Treaty of Vienna of 1815. The main objective was to undo most of the changes made during the Napoleonic wars. The Congress was hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich.
→ The territorial changes made at the Congress of Vienna :
→ The Bourbon dynasty which was ruling in France before the revolution of 1789 was restored to the throne.
→ France lost the territories that it had annexed under Napoleon.
→ A number of states were set-up on the boundaries of France to prevent French expansion in future.
→ The kingdom of Netherlands together with Belgium was set-up in the north and Genoa was given to Piedmont in the south.
→ Austria was given Lombardy and Venetia, which were parts of Italy.
→ Prussia was given territories on its western frontiers.
→ Prussia was also given a part of Saxony.
• The main intention was to restore the monarchies that had been overthrown by Napoleon.
→ Conservative regimes set up in 1815 were autocratic who did not tolerate criticism and any disagreement with them.
→ Most of them imposed censorship on newspapers, books, plays and songs which reflected the ideas of liberty and freedom.
But the memory and ideas of the French Revolution continued to inspire liberals. So, liberal nationalists took up the issue of freedom of the press to criticise the new conservative governments.
The Revolutionaries
• When the conservative regimes were set up in 1815 and started supressing the ideas of liberty and freedom. Liberal-nationalists went underground due to fear of repression. Thy started forming secret societies in many European states to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas. The main focus for a revolutionary was to:
→ Oppose monarchical forms that had been established after the Vienna Congress
→ To fight for liberty and freedom.
• Most of these revolutionaries saw the creation of nation-states as a necessary part of this struggle for freedom.
Giuseppe Mazzini
• Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian revolutionary was one such individual.
• He was born in Genoa in 1807.
• He became a member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
• At the age 24, he was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria.
• He subsequently founded two more underground societies, first, Young Italy in Marseilles, and then, Young Europe in Berne, whose members were like-minded young men from Poland, France, Italy and the German states.
• He believed that nations to be the natural units of mankind. Therefore, Italy had to become a single unified republic within a wider alliance of nations. Formation of Italian republic only could be the basis of Italian liberty.
• His ideas influenced the people in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland and thus they formed similar secret societies. Thus, Metternich described him as ‘the most dangerous enemy of our social order’. Here by our social order we mean conservative regimes.