CBSE Class 10 Social Science Nationalism in Europe Economic Hardship, Allegories and German Unification Notes Set 06

Economic hardship in Europe in the 1830s

The 1830s were a difficult decade for ordinary Europeans, and this discontent fed the demand for liberal and national change. Several causes worked together.

1. Population grew sharply, so there were more job seekers than jobs.

2. Many people moved from villages to crowded towns, where housing and sanitation were poor.

3. Cheap machine-made goods from industrial England displaced hand producers such as weavers and small workshop owners.

4. In the countryside, peasants still paid feudal dues while the aristocracy kept its privileges.

5. Bad harvests and rising food prices pushed the poor towards hunger and unrest.

Women in the nationalist struggles

Many women took part in liberal and national movements. They formed political associations, started newspapers and joined meetings and demonstrations. Even so, they were denied the right to vote, and when the Frankfurt Parliament met in 1848 they were allowed in only as observers, not as representatives.

The nation as a person: allegories

Artists gave the abstract idea of a nation a human face by showing it as a woman. Marianne was the female allegory of the French nation, drawn from the ideas of Liberty and the Republic, and shown with a red cap, the tricolour and the cockade. Germania was the allegory of Germany, shown wearing a crown of oak leaves, a symbol of heroism, and holding a sword and a flag. Such images appeared on coins, stamps and statues so that citizens could picture the nation and feel loyal to it.

Conservatism after 1815

After Napoleon's defeat, European powers met at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to restore the old order. The conservatives who dominated this period shared three main beliefs.

1. Established, traditional institutions such as the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property and the family should be preserved.

2. Society should not simply go back to the days before the French Revolution.

3. Modernisation, in the form of a modern army, efficient bureaucracy and a growing economy, could in fact strengthen autocratic monarchies.

Britain: a nation-state built slowly

In Britain the nation-state was not the result of a sudden revolution. Before the eighteenth century there was no British nation; the people of the British Isles saw themselves as English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish. The English nation grew in wealth and power and extended its influence over the others. The English Parliament, which seized power from the monarchy in 1688, became the instrument that forged the nation-state. The Act of Union of 1707 joined England and Scotland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and in practice Scotland came under English influence because the British Parliament was dominated by English members.

Unification of Germany

Middle-class liberals tried to unite the German states in 1848 through the Frankfurt Parliament, but the monarchy and the army crushed this effort. After that, Prussia took the lead. Its chief minister Otto von Bismarck used the army and the bureaucracy and fought three wars, against Denmark, Austria and France, over seven years. Prussia won all three. In January 1871 the Prussian king William I was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles. The new state put great stress on a strong currency, army and legal system.

Culture and the idea of the nation

Nations were also imagined through culture. Romanticism rejected the cult of reason and gave importance to feeling, folk songs, folk dances, poetry and local customs. Language mattered too: Polish, banned from schools by Russian rule, became a symbol of resistance when the clergy used it in church services. Folk traditions collected by writers such as the Grimm brothers showed people they shared a common heritage.

The Habsburg Empire and the Balkans

The Habsburg Empire was a patchwork of regions and peoples, including German-speaking Austrians, Magyars in Hungary, Czechs and Slovaks in Bohemia, Italians in Lombardy and Veneto, and Poles in Galicia. Because it had no common identity, nationalist ideas threatened its unity.

The Balkans were a region of geographical and ethnic variation, with Slavic peoples such as Serbs, Croats and Bulgarians. As the Ottoman Empire weakened, these peoples claimed independence. The great European powers competed for trade, colonies and military strength and wanted influence in the region, which made the Balkans a zone of conflict and led finally to the First World War.

Model answer: why were developments in the 1830s a cause of unrest?

Rising population, migration to cities, competition from machine-made goods, surviving feudal dues and poor harvests together produced unemployment and hunger. People blamed the old order, and so demands for liberal and national reform grew.

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