Chapter – 1

The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

In this post we have given the detailed notes of class 10 Social Science (History) Chapter 1 The Rise of Nationalism in Europe in English. These notes are useful for the students who are going to appear in class 10 board exams.

Chapter 1, The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

What is Nationalism?

Nationalism: Nationalism is the sentiment through which people come to see themselves as belonging to a single nation, bound together by a shared history, language, culture and territory, and place loyalty to this nation above every other loyalty. Before the nineteenth century, the map of Europe was very different from what it is today. What we today know as Germany, Italy and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies and cantons whose rulers had their own autonomous territories. The nation-state — a form of state in which a single government exercises sovereign power over a clearly defined territory, and whose citizens share a common identity — was a new and modern development in Europe, one that emerged largely as a consequence of the French Revolution.

Before the rise of nation-states, Europe was ruled by dynastic monarchies, empires and the Church. People’s loyalties were directed towards their local ruler, their region or their religion rather than towards a ‘nation’. Nationalism transformed this thinking by encouraging people to unite on the basis of a shared language, culture and history.

The French Revolution (1789) and the First Expression of Nationalism

The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789. The political and constitutional changes that followed led to the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens. The revolutionaries declared that it was the people who would henceforth constitute the nation and shape its destiny.

• La patrie and le citoyen: New ideas such as la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) emphasised the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution.
• The tricolour flag: A new French flag, the tricolour, replaced the former royal standard.
• The Estates General: It was renamed the National Assembly and elected by citizens who had the right to vote.
• New administrative units: Old, irregular regional divisions were abolished and replaced by 83 departéments, administered by locally elected officials.
• Internal customs duties were abolished, and uniform laws, drafted in Paris, were extended to the entire country.
• A uniform system of weights and measures was adopted, and French, as spoken and written in Paris, was promoted as the common language of the nation.

The revolutionaries also proclaimed that it was their mission to liberate not only the French people but the peoples of Europe from despotism, in other words, to help other peoples of Europe become nations as well.

Napoleon and the Spread of Nationalist Ideas

Napoleon Bonaparte destroyed democracy in France in 1799 by crowning himself Emperor, but he continued to spread many of the revolutionary ideals to the rest of Europe.

Civil Code of 1804 (Napoleonic Code): This code did away with all privileges based on birth, established equality before the law and secured the right to property. Napoleon extended this code to the regions under French control — including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and large parts of Germany.

• Administrative divisions were simplified.
• Feudal systems were abolished, and peasants were freed from serfdom and manorial dues.
• Guild restrictions in towns were removed, allowing business and trade to expand.
• Transport and communication systems were improved.

Although initially many, including businessmen, small-scale entrepreneurs and artisans, welcomed these changes, the initial enthusiasm turned into hostility as it became clear that the new administrative arrangements did not go hand in hand with political freedom. Increased taxation, censorship and forced conscription into the French armies required to fight Napoleon’s wars outweighed the benefits, giving rise to resentment and, ironically, to nationalist sentiments across the conquered regions.

The Rise of the Liberal Middle Class

After 1815, the ideas of national unity in Europe were closely allied to the ideology of liberalism, which came to be linked with the aspirations of the new middle classes — educated and enterprising commercial classes, industrialists, businessmen and professionals such as lawyers, teachers and civil servants.

Liberalism: The term derives from the Latin root liber, meaning free. For the 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, and stood against the arbitrary powers of dynastic rulers, aristocratic privileges and the special powers enjoyed by the clergy.

After 1815, the demand for a constitutional and representative government, along with national unification, became a central slogan of the liberal-nationalist movements in Europe. Economically, liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the abolition of restrictions on the movement of goods and capital. In Germany, the customs union or Zollverein, formed in 1834 at the initiative of Prussia, abolished tariff barriers between the numerous German states and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two. This encouraged the building of railways, gave a strong economic boost to German unification, and strengthened nationalist sentiment.

The Revolutionary Year of 1848: Political and Social Revolutionaries

Liberal and democratic revolutions took place across Europe in 1848. Two distinct strands are visible in this wave of upheaval:

• Political liberals from the middle classes: Combined their demands for constitutionalism with national unification, expressing themselves through popular assemblies and demonstrations.
• Urban and rural poor: Artisans, workers and peasants pressed for their own demands relating to hunger, unemployment and food scarcity, especially after a severe subsistence crisis gripped Europe in the early months of 1848.

The Frankfurt Parliament, 1848

In the German regions, middle-class professionals, businessmen and members of the educated classes started a movement for a unified German nation to function within a constitutional framework. On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives marched in a festive procession to take their places in the Frankfurt Parliament formally convened in the Church of St Paul (Paulskirche).

The assembly drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament. The Parliament offered the crown of this constitutional monarchy to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, but he rejected it, joining other conservative princes in opposing the elected assembly. The social base of the Parliament was narrow — it had excluded women, artisans and workers from political rights, which cost it the popular support it needed. Faced with the combined might of the aristocracy and the military, the Parliament was forced to disband.

Although the Frankfurt Parliament’s attempt at unification failed, it forced the German landed aristocracy and military to realise the significance of the popular nationalist sentiment associated with liberal nationalism, and laid the groundwork for later efforts.

Aristocracy versus the New Middle Class

In the early nineteenth century, social and political power in Europe was mainly in the hands of the aristocracy. This was a small and powerful group whose power rested on the ownership of vast landed estates in the countryside as well as fine townhouses in the cities. The nobility across much of Europe was united by a common lifestyle, in which French was frequently the spoken language of polite aristocratic society, and their families were often connected by ties of marriage across national boundaries.

However, the aristocracy was numerically a small group, and the majority of the population consisted of the peasantry. In Western parts of the continent, peasant land-holdings were small and fragmented, whereas in Eastern and Central Europe, vast estates were cultivated by serfs.

Industrialisation in the nineteenth century led to the emergence of new social groups in Western and parts of Central Europe: a working class and, more importantly, an industrial middle class made up of industrialists, businessmen and professionals whose wealth was based on the production and trade of manufactured goods, rather than on land ownership. It was this new middle class that most keenly embraced the values of nationalism and liberalism, since they sought a share in political power and the removal of the traditional privileges enjoyed by the aristocracy.

Unification of Germany

After the failed revolutions of 1848, German nationalists came to see that unification would be achieved not through popular assemblies but through the leadership of the state of Prussia. Prussia’s Chief Minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the architect of this process, carried out with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy.

Bismarck conducted three wars over seven years to achieve unification —

• The Austro-Prussian War, 1866: Ended with a decisive Prussian victory.
• The Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71: Ended with a Prussian victory, completing the process of German unification.

In January 1871, in a ceremony held at the Palace of Versailles, King William I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor (Kaiser). This unification of Germany was achieved primarily through military conquest and bureaucratic and administrative measures directed by Prussia, rather than through liberal, democratic institutions.

The new German state placed a high priority on modernising its currency, banking, legal and judicial systems. This Prussian model of nation-building later provided the foundation for Germany’s growing economic and military strength.

Unification of Italy

Like Germany, Italy too had a long history of political fragmentation in the nineteenth century. Italians were scattered over several dynastic states as well as the Habsburg possessions, and only one region, Sardinia-Piedmont, was ruled by an Italian princely house. The central part of the Italian peninsula was under the direct control of the Pope, and the northern regions were under Austrian Habsburg rule.

Three leaders were central to the movement for Italian unification —

• Giuseppe Mazzini: He formed a secret society called Young Italy for the dissemination of his nationalist ideas, dreaming of a united Italian republic. His ideas inspired an entire generation of young Italian nationalists, though his uprisings met with repeated failure.
• Count Camillo Benso di Cavour: The Chief Minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, who led the movement to unify the Italian states through skilful diplomacy, notably an alliance with France, to defeat Austria. Cavour was neither a democrat nor a revolutionary, but a pragmatic statesman who steered Italy towards unification.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi: He led a volunteer army known as the Red Shirts to conquer southern Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, winning the support of the local peasants and handing over the conquered territories to the unified Italian kingdom.

In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was declared king of unified Italy. Italy was unified as a constitutional monarchy, though a large proportion of the population remained excluded from nationalist consciousness and did not even speak the Italian language.

Britain’s Evolutionary Path to Nationhood

The formation of the nation-state in Britain differed sharply from the paths taken by Germany and Italy. In Britain, the nation-state was not the outcome of a sudden revolution or war of unification, but rather the result of a long, drawn-out process, without any single dramatic nationalist movement.

There was no British nation prior to the eighteenth century. The primary identities of the people inhabiting the British Isles were ethnic ones — English, Welsh, Scot or Irish — each with its own cultural and political traditions. As the English nation steadily grew in wealth, importance and power, it was able to extend its influence over the other nations of the islands.

• The Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland resulted in the formation of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’. This meant, in effect, that England was able to impose its influence on Scotland — Scotland’s independent parliament was suppressed after the Act of Union.
• The Scottish Highlands, with their distinctive Gaelic culture and language, were suppressed whenever they attempted to assert independence.
• Ireland, already deeply divided between Catholics and Protestants, was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801, following the suppression of an Irish rebellion.

A new British nation was thus forged through the political dominance of England, symbolised by a new ‘British’ national flag (Union Jack), a national anthem (God Save Our Noble King) and the promotion of the English language — while the distinct cultures of Scotland, Wales and Ireland were systematically suppressed.

Visualising the Nation

Artists in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries personified a nation as a female figure, called an allegory, in order to give an abstract idea a concrete form. The female figure did not represent any specific woman; it was a symbol used to embody the nation as a whole.

• Marianne: The allegory chosen to personify the French nation, depicted wearing a red Phrygian cap, a symbol of liberty associated with the freed slaves of ancient Rome. Statues of Marianne were erected in public squares across France, and her image was used on official seals, coins and stamps to imprint the ideals of the Republic — liberty, equality and fraternity — on the popular imagination.
• Germania: The allegory chosen to personify the German nation, depicted wearing a crown of oak leaves, since the German oak stood for heroism, and carrying a sword. Her robe often bore the imperial eagle, a symbol of the old Holy Roman Empire. A well-known painting of Germania shows her holding the flag associated with the liberal-nationalist movement of the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament — a tricolour of black, red and gold, which later became the German national flag.

Through these allegorical female figures, artists sought to make abstract ideas such as liberty, justice and the nation itself concrete and emotionally powerful in the eyes of ordinary people.

The Balkans and Nationalism as a Source of Conflict

In the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, nationalism, once tied to liberal and democratic ideals, gradually turned into a narrow creed used by different European states to further their own interests. This shift is most visible in the case of the Balkans.

The Balkans, a region comprising the modern-day territories of Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, was inhabited by a mix of Slavic peoples with diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds.

• A large part of this region was under the control of the Ottoman Empire.
• With the spread of the ideas of romantic nationalism in the Balkans, together with the decline of the Ottoman Empire, this area became extremely explosive, as the Balkan peoples used the concept of nationhood based on ethnicity to declare independence.
• The various Balkan states repeatedly fought each other for territory and greater independence, leading to a series of Balkan Wars that kept the region in a constant state of instability.
• At the same time, the Great Powers of Europe — Russia, Germany, England and Austro-Hungary — were engaged in a scramble for strategic influence, trade and territory in this region, which added to the volatility of the situation.

This tangled web of competing nationalist alliances and great-power rivalries in the Balkans eventually became one of the major causes of the outbreak of the First World War. Nationalism, which had once been a force that bound people together and led movements for freedom, thus became, in this later stage, a source of bitter rivalry, aggressive politics and conflict between European nations.

Key Points to Remember

• Nationalism is the sentiment by which people identify themselves as one nation, based on a shared history, language and culture.
• The French Revolution (1789) gave the first expression to nationalist ideas through concepts like la patrie and le citoyen.
• Napoleon’s Civil Code (1804) established equality before the law and spread uniform administrative systems, but also brought high taxation and forced conscription.
• The liberal middle class demanded constitutions, representative government and unified nation-states.
• The Frankfurt Parliament (1848) was the first attempt at German unification but ultimately failed.
• Germany was unified in 1871 under Prussian leadership through the efforts of Otto von Bismarck, achieved mainly through war.
• Italy was unified in 1861 through the combined efforts of Mazzini, Cavour and Garibaldi.
• Britain’s nationhood evolved gradually, through political dominance rather than a single revolution.
• Marianne (France) and Germania (Germany) were female allegories used to visualise and popularise the idea of the nation.
• Aggressive nationalism, ethnic rivalries and great-power competition in the Balkans became a major cause of the First World War.

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