Class 10 Nationalism in Europe short Summary .
What is Nationalism?
• Nationalism is the idea of a sense of common identity and a sense of belongingness to a particular geographical area. Apart from this it is also a sense of attachment to a particular culture.
• It should be kept in mind that culture encompasses a variety of factors, like language, cuisine, costumes, folklores, etc.
The French Revolution and the Idea of the Nation
• The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789. France was a full-fledged territorial state in 1789 under the rule of an absolute monarch.
The political and constitutional changes that came in the wake of the French Revolution led to the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens. The revolution proclaimed that it was the people who would henceforth constitute the nation and shape its destiny.
• From the very beginning, the French revolutionaries introduced various measures and practices that could create a sense of collective identity amongst the French people. The ideas of the fatherland and the citizen emphasized the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution.
• A new French flag, the tricolour, was chosen to replace the former royal standard.
• The Estates General was elected by the body of 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 put in place and it formulated uniform laws for all citizens within its territory.
• Internal customs duties and dues were abolished and a uniform system of weights and measures was adopted
• Regional dialects were discouraged and French, as it was spoken and written in Paris, became the common language of the nation.The revolutionaries further declared that it was the mission and the destiny of the French nation to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism, in other words to help other peoples of Europe to become nations.
Effects of French Revolution on Other Countries
• When the news of the events in France reached the different cities of Europe, students and other members of educated middle classes began setting up Jacobin clubs.
• Their activities and campaigns prepared the way for the French armies which moved into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and much of Italy in the 1790s. With the outbreak of the revolutionary wars, the French armies began to carry the idea of nationalism abroad.
Equality Equality was one of the main principal of French Revolution. It implied the equality of all before law and abolition of privileges enjoyed by the upper order in the society.
Liberty Revolutionary idea of liberty was hailed all over Europe. It implied social, political and religious freedom. The declaration of rights ofmade people understand the importance of personal liberty and rights.
Sovereignty The France revolution emphasized the fact that sovereignty recites in the general public and law should be based on the will of the people. It infused the spirit of nationalism and patriotisms in the people.
Situation Before Revolution
• In the mid-eighteenth-century Europe there were no 'nation-states' as we know them today.
•Modern day Germany , italy and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies and cantons whose rulers had their autonomous territories
•Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies within the territories of which lived diverse peoples. They did not see themselves as sharing a collective identity or a common culture. Often, they even spoke different languages and belonged to different ethnic groups.
• The Habsburg Empire that ruled over Austria-Hungary, for example, was a patchwork of many different regions and peoples. It included the Alpine regions - the Tyrol, Austria and the Sudetenland - as well as Bohemia, where the aristocracy was predominantly German-speaking. It also included the Italian-speaking provinces of Lombardy and Venetia.
• In Hungary, half of the population spoke Magyar while the other half spoke a variety of dialects. In Galicia, the aristocracy spoke Polish. Besides these three dominant groups, there also lived within the boundaries of the empire, a mass of subject peasant peoples - Bohemians and Slovaks to the North, Slovenes in Carniola, Croats to the South and Roumans to the East in Transylvania. Such differences did not easily promote a sense of political unity. The only tie binding these diverse groups together was a common allegiance to the emperor.
Causes and Process of Emergence of Nation States
• The Aristocracy Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class on the continent. The members of this class were united by a common way of life that cut across regional divisions.
• They owned estates in the countryside and also town-houses.
• They spoke French for purposes of diplomacy and in high society. Their families were often connected by ties of marriage. This powerful aristocracy was, however, numerically a small group.
•The majority of the population was made up of the peasantry. To the West, the bulk of the land was farmed by tenants and small owners, while in Eastern and Central Europe the pattern of landholding was characterised by vast estates which were cultivated by serfs.
Idea of Liberal Nationalism
• Ideas of national unity in early-nineteenth-century Europe were closely allied to the ideology of liberalism. The term 'liberalism' derives from the Latin root liber, meaning free.
• For the new middle classes liberalism stood for freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law. Politically, it emphasised the concept of government by consent.
• Since the French Revolution, liberalism had stood for the end of autocracy and clerical privileges, a constitution and representative government through parliament. Nineteenth-century liberals also stressed the inviolability of private property. Right to Vote Yet, equality before the law did not necessarily stand for universal suffrage.
• Men without property and all women were excluded from political rights.
•Only for a brief period under the Jacobins did all adult males enjoy suffrage. However, the Napoleonic Code went back to limited suffrage and reduced women to the status of a minor, subject to the authority of fathers and husbands.
●Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women and non-propertied men organised opposition movements demanding equal political rights.
Freedom of Access to Markets In the economic sphere, liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital. During the nineteenth century this was a strong demand of the emerging middle classes.
A New Conservatism after 1815
●Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven by a spirit of conservatism. Conservatives believed that established, traditional institutions of state and society like the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property and the family - should be preserved.
●Most conservatives, however, did not propose a return to the society of pre-revolutionary days. Rather, they realised, from the changes initiated by Napoleon, that modernisation could in fact strengthen traditional institutions like the monarchy. It could make alate power more effective and strong.
●A modern army, an efficient bureaucracy, a dynamic economy, the abolition of feudalism and serfdom could strengthen the autocratic monarchies of Europe.
The Vienna Congress in 1815, representatives of the European powers Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria who had collectively defeated Napoleon, met at Vienna to draw up a settlement for Europe. The Congress was hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich. The delegates drew up the Treaty of Vienna of 1815 with the object of undoing most of the changes that had come about in Europe during the Napoleonic wars.
●The Bourbon dynasty, which had been deposed during the French Revolution, was restored to power and France lost the territories it had annexed under Napoleon.
●A series of states were set up on the boundaries of France to prevent French expansion in future. Thus the kingdom of the Netherlands, which included Belgium, I was set up in the North and Genoa was added to piedmont in the South.
●Prussia was given important new territories on its Western frontiers, while Austria was given control of Northern Italy. But the German confederation of 39 states that had been set up by Napoleon was left untouched.
●In the East, Russia was given part of Poland while Prussia was given a portion of Saxony. The main intention was to restore the monarchies that had been overthrown by Napoleon and create a new conservative order in Europe.
The Revolutionaries 1815
During the years following 1815, the fear of repression drove many liberal-nationalists underground. Secret societies sprang up in many European states to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas.
■ One such individual was the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. Born in Genoa in 1807, he became a member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
■ As a young man of 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.
●Mazzini believed that God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind. So Italy could not continue to be a patchwork of small states and kingdoms.
● Matternich described him as "the most dangerous enemy of our social order".
The Age of Revolutions: 1830-1848
●As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their power, liberalism and nationalismo to be increasingly associated with revolution in many regions of Europe such as the Italian and German states, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Ireland and Poland. These revolutions were led by the liberal-nationalists belonging to the educated middle-class elite, among whom were professors, school teachers, clerks and members of the commercial middle classes.
●The first upheaval took place in France in July 1830. The Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815, were now overthrown by liberal revolutionaries who installed constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head.
Greek War of Independence An event that mobilised nationalist feelings among the educated elite across Europe was the Greek findependence. war of . Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century. The growth of revolutionary nationalism in Europe sparked off a struggle for independence amongst the Greeks which began in 1821.
●Nationalists in Greece got support from other Greeks living in exile and also from many West Europeans who had sympathies for ancient Greek culture.
●The Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation. The Romantic Imagination and National Feeling Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings.
●Romantic artists and poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and science and focused instead on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings.
●Their effort was to create a sense of a shared collective heritage, a common cultural past, as the basis of a nation.
Other Romantics such as the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people - das volk. It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of the nation (volksgeist) was popularised.
So collecting and recording these forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.
Role of Language Language too played an These Important role in developing nationalist sentiments.
Popular Revolt Caused by Hunger, Hardship
The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe. The first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in population all over Europe. In most countries there were more seekers of jobs than employment. Population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums.
■ The rise of food prices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in town and country. The year 1848 was one such year. Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads.
●Earlier, in 1845, weavers in Silesia had led a revolt against contractors who supplied them raw material and gave them orders for finished textiles but drastically reduced their payments.
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