Hist 143 Tooley
NATIONALISM and NATION-BUILDING IN
19TH-CENTURY EUROPE
1815--Congress of Vienna; design for Concert of Europe and a
Conservative Order.
1819--Greek Revolution for Independence from the the Turks.
1830--July Revolution in Paris (Paris sneezes) spreads to German and
Italian states, Belgium, Poland, etc. (Europe catches cold).
1848--The Revolutions of 1848.
February Revolution in
Paris, then Europe catches cold in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin,
Milan, Rome, etc., etc. Everywhere, the revolutions tend to start
as political revolutions, threaten to turn into social revolutions, and
end up as important stages of nationalist change. For example,
the...
German States: Revolutions in most German
states either run off or buffalo their local princely dynasty.
Many constitutions are accepted by sovereigns wishing to avoid the
Louis XVI Syndrome. Frankfurt Parliament is constructed of
representatives from all states and attempts to make a constitution for
Germany, but founders on the fact that there is no such thing as
Germany. They have to choose between the traditional leadership
of Austria (with all its imperial non-German interests--grossdeutsch
solution) and the rising northern power Prussia, head of the Customs
Union, (this would mean excluding Austria, hence, kleindeutsch
solution). The Parliament of learned and liberal men offers the
imperial crown to Frederick William IV of Prussia, who replies, “I
don’t pick up crowns from the gutter.” The crowned heads realize
that the revolutionary (liberal) governments don’t really have much
power and come back. Some constitutional changes remain, but not
many. What does remain is a sour taste in the mouth of the
liberals: next time, they say (and I am only paraphrasing
slightly), “We’ll take care of POWER issues first, then worry about
nice, neat, constitutional government!”
French developments: 1848
Revolution ends with Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte crowning himself as Emperor Napoleon III in
1852. He embarks on foreign policy adventures with which he hopes
to achieve grandeur for the Nation. Hence: the Crimean War,
1853-1856, the Italian War against Austria, 1859, eventually the
intervention in a Mexican quarrel, 1866-67, and ultimately the
ill-fated declaration of war against Prussia in 1870 which led to his
defeat and downfall.
Italian developments:
Liberals and nationalists in the separate
and partly economically backward Italian states long to unify Italy, so
that she can take her rightful place in the sun (something suggested by
the great theorist of nationalism, Giuseppe Mazzini). In
Piedmont/Sardinia, Count Cavour takes the lead as first minister to the
king. He prepares his country for leadership within “Italy,” then
engineers a war (allied with Napoleon III) to kick the Austrias out of
northern Italy (1859). This war set off a chain reaction of
fighting, maneuvering, uprising, and eventually, UNIFICATION in
1862. The most difficult piece was perhaps uniting southern
Italy, different in culture and history, but the great hero of Italian
unification, Giuseppe Garibaldi, led the Thousand Red Shirts to Sicily
and then the mainland to defeat the forces of the Kingdom of Naples and
bring about unification.
Austrian developments:
The multinational empire of the Habsburgs
is about as easygoing and liberal as a monarchy can get. But many
elites among the dozen or so nationalities in the empire want
greater (national) fulfillment by having their own country.
Hence, the 1848 Revolution here turned into a secession movement by
Hungary. The forces of the Empire won, but when Austria got
hammered by the Prussians twenty years later (well, 1866), the
Hungarians took advantage of Vienna’s difficulties to remake the empire
into two parts, Austria and Hungary, with Hungary nearly
independent. They were certainly independent enough to embark on
“Magyarization,” or making the Croats, Serbs, Ruthenes, Slovaks,
Germans, and others knuckle under and go to school in Hungarian, read
only Hungarian street signs, and all the rest.
German developments: The
1848 revolutions shook up the German
liberals who wanted unification, teaching them that POWER is more
important than some niggling devotion to constitutions, parliamentary
power, etc., at least if you want to unify a modern country.
Besides, after 1848 the Austrians delighted in humiliating the
Prussians whenever they could. Yet in 1862, the redoubtable Otto
von Bismarck was appointed Prussian prime minister. No
nationalist himself, Bismarck saw that Prussia’s health required
unification of Germany with Prussia at the helm. In a series of
three wars,
Danish War--1864 (Austrian Empire and Prussia v.
Denmark)
Austro-Prussian War--1866 (Austrian Empire v.
Prussia)
Franco-Prussian War--1870-71 (Prussia and German
states except Austria v. France),
Bismarck maneuvered the Great Powers into accepting unification of the
German states as the German Empire, with Prussia’s king serving also as
the “Emperor,” or “Kaiser.” Bismarck wrote out an authoritarian
constitution, but immediately had the support of those “liberals” who
had talked most about POWER and the NATION, a group which came to be
known as the National Liberals.
Europe Post-1871
Increasingly concerned with POWER and material might, the major
European powers launched into a frenzy of Imperialism, in which
European countries took actual control of most of Africa, some of the
Middle East, a good bit of Asia and the South Pacific, etc. At
home in Europe, Great Power nationalism led to continuing
confrontations, while small-power nationalism, especially in
Southeastern Europe, led to increasingly bitter frictions, two Balkan
wars, the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at
Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and ultimately World War I. Yet the
European name for this period (which included Victorian England,
improved working-class conditions, the coming of the phonograph and the
telephone, and much more) was the belle époque, the “beautiful
time.” There are enough ironies in all that to keep us busy for a while.
Terms
Hector Berlioz, Racoszy March
levée en masse, 1793
J.G.W. Herder
Volksgeist
Giuseppe Mazzini
Lord Palmerston
Italo Benso di Cavour
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Gilbert and Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore