NCERT Notes CBSE Class 10 History Chapter 1 Nationalism In Europe

 

                        HISTORY CLASS 10 

                             CHAPTER - 2     

                NATIONALISM IN EUROPE

 INTRODUCTION

 In 1848, Frédéric Sorrieu, a French artist, prepared a series of four prints visualising his dream of a world made up of ‘democratic and social Republics’, as he called them. Absolutist – Literally, a government or system of rule that has no restraints on the power exercised. In history, the term refers to a form of monarchical government that was centralised, militarised and repressive. This chapter will deal with many of the issues visualised by Sorrieu. During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force which brought about sweeping changes in the political and mental world of Europe. The concept and practices of a modern state, in which a centralised power exercised sovereign control over a clearly defined territory, had been developing over a long period of time in Europe. This commonness did not exist from time immemorial; it was forged through struggles, through the actions of leaders and the common people. This chapter will look at the diverse processes through which nation-states and nationalism came into being in nineteenth-century Europe. The concept and practices of a modern state in which a centralised power exercised sovereign control over a clearly defined teritory had been developing over a clearly defined territory had been developing over a long period of time in Europe. Nation state was one in which the magority of its citizens and not only its rules, came to develop a sense of common identity and shared history or descent. This commonness did not exist from time memorial it was forget through struggles, through the struggles, through the actions of leaders and the common people. France was a full-fledged territorial state in 1789 under the rule of an absolute monarch. The revolution proclaimed that it was the people who would hence forth constitute the nation and shape its destiny.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE IDEA OF THE NATION

1. The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789. France, as you it was a full-fledged territorial state in 1789 under the rule of an absolute monarch.

 2. The revolution proclaimed that it was the people who would henceforth constitute the nation and shape its destiny.

3. 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.

 4. 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.

 5. 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.

6. Through a return to monarchy Napoleon had, no doubt, destroyed democracy in France, but in the administrative field he had incorporated revolutionary principles in order to make the whole system more rational and efficient. The Civil Code of 1804 – usually known as the Napoleonic Code – did away with all privileges based on birth, established equality before the law and secured the right to property.

 7. Peasants, artisans, workers and new businessmen enjoyed a new-found freedom. Businessmen and small-scale producers of goods, in particular, began to realise that uniform laws, standardised weights and measures, and a common national currency would facilitate the movement and exchange of goods and capital from one region to another.

 8. As it became clear that the new administrative arrangements did not go hand in hand with political freedom. Increased taxation, censorship, forced conscription into the French armies required to conquer the rest of Europe, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of the administrative changes.

THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE NEW MIDDLE CLASS

The Aristocracy

1. Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class on the continent.

2. The members of this class were united by a common way of life that cut across regional divisions.

 3. They owned estates in the countryside and also town-houses.

 4. They spoke French for purposes of diplomacy and in high society.

 5. This powerful aristocracy was, however, numerically a small group.

Present

 1. The majority of the population was made up of the peasantry.

2. 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. 

The New Middle Class

1. In its wake, new social groups came into being: a working-class population, and middle classes made up of industrialists, businessmen, professionals. In Central and Eastern Europe these groups were smaller in number till late nineteenth century.

 2. It was among the educated, liberal middle classes that ideas of national unity following the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity.

WHAT DID LIBERAL NATIONALISM STAND FOR?

1. 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.

 2. Nineteenth-century liberals also stressed the inviolability of private property.

3. Equality before the law did not necessarily stand for universal suffrage. You will recall that in revolutionary France, which marked the first political experiment in liberal democracy, the right to vote and to get elected was granted exclusively to property-owning men.

4. Men without property and all women were excluded from political rights.

5. In the economic sphere, liberalism stood for the freedom of markets and the abolition of stateimposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.

6. Napoleon’s administrative measures had created out of countless small confederation of 39 states. Each of these possessed its own currency, and weights and measures.

7. In 1834, a customs union or zollverein was formed at the initiative of Prussia and joined by most of the German states. The union abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two.

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 prerevolutionary days. A modern army, an efficient bureaucracy, a dynamic economy, the abolition of feudalism and serfdom could strengthen the autocratic monarchies of Europe.

 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. They 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.

Conservative regimes set up in 1815 were autocratic. They did not tolerate criticism and dissent, and sought to curb activities that questioned the legitimacy of autocratic governments.

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

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. Italy could not continue to be a patchwork of small states and kingdoms. It had to be forged into a single unified republic within a wider alliance of nations. Mazzini’s relentless opposition to monarchy and his vision of democratic republics frightened the conservatives.

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS: 1830-1848

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

 Greek War

An event that mobilised nationalist feelings among the educated elite across Europe was the Greek war of independence. 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. Poets and artists lauded Greece as the cradle of European civilisation and mobilised public opinion to support its struggle against a Muslim empire. Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation.

The Romantic Imagination The development of nationalism did not come about only through wars and territorial expansion. Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings.

Romanticism, a cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment. 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.

Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

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. Population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums. This was especially so in textile production, which was carried out mainly in homes or small workshops and was only partly mechanised.

 The year 1848 was one such year. Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads.

 FRANKFURT PARLIAMENT

In the German regions a large number of political associations came together in the city of Frankfurt and decided to vote for an all-German National Assembly. On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives marched in a festive procession to take their places in the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St. Paul. They drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament.

Obstacles:

 (i) Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly.

(ii) While the opposition of the aristocracy and military became stronger, the social basis of parliament eroded. The parliament was dominated by the middle classes who resisted the demands of workers and artisans and consequently lost their support.

 (iii)Issue of extending political rights to women was a controversial one within the liberal movement, they were denied suffrage rights during the election of the Assembly.

 Outcomes:

(i) Though conservative forces were able to suppress liberal movements in 1848, they could not restore the old order.

 (ii) In the years after 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce the changes that had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815.

 (iii) The Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867.

UNIFICATION OF GERMANY

 Prussia took on the leadership of the movement for national unification. Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the architect of this process carried out with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy. Three wars over seven years – with Austria, Denmark and France – ended in Prussianvictory and completed the process of unification. In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed German Emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles.

On the bitterly cold morning of 18 January 1871, an assembly comprising the princes of the German states, representatives of the army, important Prussian ministers including the chief minister Otto von Bismarck gathered in the unheated Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles they proclaim the new German Empire headed by Kaiser William I of Prussia.

The new state placed a strong emphasis on modernising the currency, banking, legal and judicial systems in Germany.

UNIFICATION OF ITALY

Italy Unified

 During the middle of the nineteenth century, Italy was divided into seven states, only one, Sardinia-Piedmont, was ruled by an Italian princely house. The north was under Austrian Habsburgs, the centre was ruled by the Pope the southern regions were under the domination of the Bourbon kings of Spain.

 During the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini had sought to put together a coherent programme for a unitary Italian Republic. He had also formed a secret society called Young Italy for the dissemination of his goals.

Chief Minister Cavour who led the movement to unify the regions of Italy was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat. They alliance with France engineered by Cavour, Sardinia-Piedmont succeeded in defeating the Austrian forces in 1859. In 1860, they marched into South Italy. In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy.

UNIFICATION OF BRITAIN

The Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland that resulted in the formation of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’ The British parliament was henceforth dominated by its English members. The growth of a British identity meant that Scotland’s distinctive culture and political institutions were systematically suppressed. The Scottish Highlanders were forbidden to speak their Gaelic language or wear their national dress, and large numbers were forcibly driven out of their homeland.

 Ireland suffered a similar fate. It was a country deeply divided between Catholics and Protestants. The English helped the Protestants of Ireland to establish their dominance over a largely Catholic country. Catholic revolts against British dominance were suppressed. After a failed revolt led by Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen (1798), Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801. The symbols of the new Britain – the British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble King), the English language – were actively promoted and the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union.

NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM

 Balkan’s Theory

 The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871 was the area called the Balkans. The Balkans was a region of geographical and ethnic variation comprising modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro whose inhabitants were broadly known as the Slavs. A large part of the Balkans was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. The spread of the ideas of romantic nationalism in the Balkans together with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire made this region very explosive. The nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire had sought to strengthen itself through modernisation and internal reforms but with very little success.

 The Balkan area became an area of intense conflict. The Balkan states were fiercely jealous of each other and each hoped to gain more territory at the expense of the others. Each power – Russia, Germany, England, Austro-Hungary – was keen on countering the hold of other powers over the Balkans, and extending its own control over the area. This led to a series of wars in the region and finally the First World War.