CBSE Class 10 Social Science The Rise of Nationalism in Europe Notes Set 08

The idea of the nation

In 1848 the French artist Frédéric Sorrieu imagined a world of democratic and social republics in a series of four prints. People of every age and nationality, each marked by a flag or costume, march past the Statue of Liberty and pay tribute to it. The prints show the dream that nations would be built on liberty and equality rather than on the will of kings.

The French Revolution and the nation

Before 1789 France was ruled by an absolute monarch. The Revolution moved sovereignty from the king to the citizens, who became the nation. Revolutionaries tried to create a feeling of collective identity through these measures:

1. Ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) were promoted.
2. A new tricolour flag replaced the royal standard.
3. The Estates General became the National Assembly, which was elected by active citizens.
4. New hymns were composed and martyrs were commemorated.
5. A uniform system of weights and measures was adopted, and French became the common national language.

Napoleon later introduced the Civil Code of 1804, known as the Napoleonic Code. It removed privileges based on birth, established equality before the law, secured the right to property, abolished the feudal system and simplified administrative divisions. However, he also reduced political freedom, and his conquests were often resented.

Europe before nation-states

Germany, Italy and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies and cantons with their own rulers. The Habsburg empire held many language groups under one ruler. A new middle class of businessmen and professionals grew with industrialisation and favoured liberalism: freedom for the individual, equality before the law, government by consent and, in economics, freedom of markets. Liberal nationalism did not mean universal suffrage; in the early period voting was limited to property-owning men.

Conservatism and the Vienna settlement

After Napoleon's defeat, the powers met at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, hosted by the Austrian chancellor Duke Metternich. Their aim was to restore the old order. The Bourbon dynasty was restored in France, a series of states was set up on France's borders, Prussia received new western territories, Austria took control of northern Italy, and Russia was given part of Poland. Conservatives believed in tradition and gradual change and set up autocratic governments that censored the press.

Revolutionaries and the age of revolutions

Secret societies spread liberal ideas. Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian revolutionary, founded Young Italy in Marseilles and Young Europe in Berne. He believed that nations were the natural units of mankind. The July Revolution of 1830 in France inspired uprisings in Belgium and Greece. Greece won independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 1830s with the support of poets, artists and Western Europeans, confirmed by the Treaty of Constantinople (1832).

Romanticism, a cultural movement, tried to create a sense of shared past through folk songs, dance and language. Thinkers such as Herder saw the true spirit of a nation in its folk culture. In Poland, language and music kept national feeling alive after the country was divided among larger powers.

The 1830s were years of hardship: population growth, unemployment, rising food prices and competition from machine-made goods. In 1848 the revolt of weavers in Silesia and food riots led to uprisings. Middle-class liberals met at the Frankfurt Parliament in May 1848 and drafted a constitution for a German nation under a monarchy. The Prussian king rejected the crown and the assembly was dissolved by troops. Women had formed political associations but were allowed into the Frankfurt assembly only as observers in the visitors' gallery.

Unification of Germany and Italy

Germany: After 1848 the Prussian state took the lead. Its chief minister Otto von Bismarck used the army and bureaucracy in three wars, against Denmark, Austria and France, all ending in Prussian victory. In January 1871 King William I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles. Earlier, in 1834, the Zollverein (customs union) had removed trade barriers among German states.

Italy: Italy was divided into seven states, and only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house. Mazzini's republican plans had failed, so Cavour, chief minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, led the movement through diplomacy and an alliance with France. In 1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi's Red Shirts took the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy.

Britain, symbols and the Balkans

Britain's nation-state was formed gradually. The English parliament took power from the monarch in 1688. The Act of Union (1707) joined England and Scotland into the United Kingdom, and Ireland was forcibly added in 1801. Symbols such as the flag and national anthem promoted a British identity.

Nations were often shown as female figures: Marianne for France and Germania for Germany. By the late nineteenth century nationalism turned narrow. The Balkans, with many ethnic groups leaving the weakening Ottoman Empire, became a region of rivalry among Russia, Germany, England and Austria-Hungary, and this tension helped bring about the First World War.

Worked examples

Example 1. Why were the 1830s years of economic hardship in Europe?
Answer: Population growth outpaced employment, so unemployment and migration to cities rose. Small producers could not compete with cheap machine-made English goods, and bad harvests pushed up food prices, leading to poverty and peasant distress.

Example 2. How did the Frankfurt Parliament fail?
Answer: It drafted a constitution for a German nation ruled by a monarch, but the Prussian king refused the crown and sided with other monarchs. The middle-class assembly also ignored workers and artisans, so it lost popular support and troops dispersed it.

Example 3. Name the main figures in the unification of Italy.
Answer: Mazzini supplied the ideal of a republic, Cavour used diplomacy as chief minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, Garibaldi led the military campaign in the south, and Victor Emmanuel II became the first king of united Italy in 1861.

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