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Nationalism
9th Grade Social Studies · 84 lessons
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Lessons in this unit
- 1What Makes a Nation?A nation is a large group of people who believe they belong together because of some mix of shared language, history, culture, territory, religion or political values. Scholars disagree about which ingredient matters most, and no single test fits every case: Switzerland has four national languages, while Germans and Austrians share one language but form separate states. In 1882 the French scholar Ernest Renan argued that a nation is ultimately a 'daily plebiscite', a community kept alive by people's continuing will to live together and by shared memories, including memories of shared suffering. Nationalism is the belief that the nation should be the main focus of loyalty and that it deserves its own self-government. This idea reshaped the world map between 1800 and 2000, replacing dynastic empires with nation-states. Understanding what a nation is helps explain why borders, flags and anthems still stir such strong feelings.
- 2Nation, State and Nation-StateThe words nation and state are often used as if they mean the same thing, but they do not. A state is a political unit with a government, defined territory, population and sovereignty, while a nation is a community of people who feel they belong together. A nation-state is the ideal in which the two match, so that one nation governs itself within one state. Before the nineteenth century most Europeans lived in dynastic states such as the Habsburg Empire, where loyalty ran to a ruling family rather than to a people. Some nations, such as the Kurds, are spread across several states without one of their own, while many states, such as India or Nigeria, contain many nations or ethnic groups. Because the perfect match is rare, the push to create nation-states has often meant redrawing borders, moving populations or pressuring minorities to assimilate, with very serious human costs.
- 3Civic and Ethnic NationalismScholars often distinguish two broad types of nationalism. Civic nationalism defines the nation by shared citizenship, laws and political values, so in principle anyone who accepts those values can belong. Ethnic nationalism defines the nation by shared ancestry, language or culture, so belonging is something you are born into. In 1944 the historian Hans Kohn argued that the civic type grew in Western Europe and the United States, while the ethnic type was stronger in Central and Eastern Europe, where nations existed before they had states. Later historians criticized this neat East–West split as too simple, pointing out that France and Britain also had ethnic and religious elements in their national identity. Most real nationalisms mix both types. The distinction still matters because it shapes rules about citizenship, such as whether nationality comes mainly from birthplace or from descent.
- 4Imagined Communities: How Historians Explain NationsAre nations ancient, or were they created in modern times? 'Primordialists' see nations as old communities rooted in kinship, language and culture. 'Modernists' argue that nations are products of the last two or three centuries: Ernest Gellner linked them to industrial societies that needed a common literate culture, and Benedict Anderson called nations 'imagined communities' because members never meet most of their fellow citizens yet feel bound to them. Anderson credited 'print capitalism', newspapers and novels in vernacular languages, with letting people imagine a shared national 'we'. Anthony D. Smith offered a middle position, ethno-symbolism, arguing that modern nations build on older myths, memories and symbols. The Czech historian Miroslav Hroch showed that small national movements typically passed from scholars, to activist agitation, to a mass movement. These theories help students ask whether a nation's story about its own antiquity is history, myth or both.
- 5Herder and the Spirit of a PeopleThe German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) helped shape cultural nationalism. Herder argued that every people, or Volk, has a unique character expressed above all through its language, folk songs and traditions, and that humanity is enriched by this diversity. Later writers summed up his idea with the term Volksgeist, the 'spirit of a people'. Herder himself valued all cultures, criticized conquest and colonialism, and did not claim that any people was superior. Yet his ideas could be used in very different ways: they inspired scholars across Central and Eastern Europe to collect folklore and write grammars of languages that elites had looked down on, and later more aggressive nationalists turned the idea of a unique Volk into claims of superiority. Herder shows how one idea can support both respect for cultural diversity and exclusive nationalism, depending on who uses it.
- 6The French Revolution and the Sovereign NationThe French Revolution transformed nationalism by making the nation, rather than the king, the source of political authority. In January 1789 the Abbé Sieyès argued that the Third Estate, the common people, was the true nation, and in August the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen stated that sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. Revolutionaries created new national symbols, including the tricolor flag, the Marseillaise and festivals celebrating the nation. When war came, the levée en masse of 1793 called on every citizen to serve, linking citizenship to military duty. Yet France was not linguistically united: a 1794 report by the Abbé Grégoire found that only a minority spoke French fluently, and the revolutionaries pushed to spread French at the expense of regional languages. The Revolution therefore offered a civic model of the nation and also showed how national unity could be imposed from the centre.
- 7Napoleon and the Nationalist BacklashNapoleon spread revolutionary reforms across Europe, but his conquests also stirred nationalism against France. He forced the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, reorganized German and Italian states, and introduced the Napoleonic Code, which swept away many old privileges. These changes simplified the political map and gave Germans and Italians experience of larger, more modern units. At the same time, occupation, heavy taxes and conscription created resentment. In Spain, a popular uprising began in Madrid on 2 May 1808 and grew into a long guerrilla war. In Prussia, defeat in 1806 prompted reforms and patriotic writing, including Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation (1807–08), which urged Germans to see themselves as one people. Historians debate how widespread this patriotism was, since many soldiers fought for their own kings rather than for 'Germany', but the wars clearly helped turn national identity into a political force.
- 8Metternich's Europe: Holding Back the Nations After 1815After Napoleon's defeat, the great powers met at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) to rebuild Europe. Led by the Austrian minister Klemens von Metternich, they aimed for a balance of power and the restoration of legitimate monarchs, not the satisfaction of national demands. Poland remained partitioned, with a kingdom under the Russian tsar; Belgium was joined to the Netherlands; Norway passed from Denmark to Sweden; and Lombardy and Venetia went to Austria. A German Confederation of 39 states replaced the Holy Roman Empire. To defend this order, the powers cooperated in the Concert of Europe and suppressed liberal and nationalist movements, for example through the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 that censored German universities. Supporters credit Vienna with preventing a general European war for decades. Critics argue that ignoring national feeling stored up the revolutions that broke out in 1830 and 1848.
- 9Romantic Nationalism: Language, Folklore and MythRomanticism, a cultural movement that celebrated emotion, nature and the past, gave nineteenth-century nationalism much of its imagery. Scholars gathered folk tales and epics, believing they preserved the authentic voice of the people. The Brothers Grimm published their first collection of German folk tales in 1812, partly to recover a shared German heritage when there was no German state. In Finland, Elias Lönnrot compiled the Kalevala (1835) from oral poetry, giving Finns a national epic while they lived under Russian rule. Writers produced dictionaries and standard grammars that turned spoken dialects into literary languages, and painters celebrated national landscapes and heroes. Romantic nationalists often blended careful scholarship with invention, presenting recent compilations as timeless. This cultural work mattered politically, because a people with its own recognized language, literature and history could more convincingly claim the right to govern itself.
- 10Music, Opera and National SoundIn the nineteenth century, music became a powerful way to express national identity. Composers drew on folk melodies, dances and legends to create a 'national' sound. Frédéric Chopin, who left Poland in 1830 and never returned, wrote polonaises and mazurkas that became symbols of Polish identity while Poland was partitioned. In Bohemia, Bedřich Smetana composed the cycle of symphonic poems Má vlast ('My Homeland'), celebrating Czech rivers, legends and history. In Finland, Jean Sibelius's Finlandia (1899–1900) was performed during a period of tightening Russian control and became an unofficial anthem of resistance. In Italy, some audiences heard the chorus of Hebrew slaves in Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco (1842) as an allegory of Italians under foreign rule, although historians debate how political its early reception really was. Music could unite people across class lines because it needed no literacy and could be shared in concert halls, churches and streets.
- 11The Greek War of IndependenceThe Greek War of Independence (1821–1832) was the first successful national revolt against the Ottoman Empire to win international recognition as a sovereign state. It was prepared by the Filiki Eteria, a secret society founded in Odessa in 1814, and drew on Greek merchants, Orthodox clergy and a revived interest in ancient Greece. Fighting was brutal on both sides, with massacres of civilians by Greek rebels and by Ottoman forces, including on the island of Chios in 1822. Many educated Europeans, called philhellenes, idealized Greece as the birthplace of democracy; the poet Lord Byron died at Missolonghi in 1824 while supporting the cause. Decisive help came from the great powers: British, French and Russian fleets destroyed an Ottoman-Egyptian fleet at Navarino in 1827. Greece became an independent kingdom in 1832 under a Bavarian prince, showing that new nations often depended on great-power politics as much as on their own struggle.
- 12Liberalism and Nationalism: Allies or Rivals?In the early nineteenth century, liberalism and nationalism were usually allies. Liberals wanted constitutions, elected assemblies, freedom of the press and equality before the law, and many believed that a free people should govern itself as a nation. Both opposed the conservative order of 1815, which rested on dynastic monarchs and multinational empires. The Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini expressed this hopeful view, imagining a brotherhood of free nations living peacefully side by side. Over time, tensions emerged: liberalism stressed individual rights, while nationalism could demand that individuals and minorities subordinate themselves to the nation. When national movements won power, some limited the rights of other groups living in their territory, and conservatives such as Bismarck later learned to use nationalism without liberalism. Comparing these ideologies helps explain why nationalism could appear progressive in one setting and repressive in another.
- 131830: The July Revolution and Belgian IndependenceThe revolutions of 1830 were the first major crack in the Vienna settlement. In July 1830 three days of street fighting in Paris overthrew the conservative Bourbon king Charles X, who had tried to restrict the press and the electorate, and replaced him with the more liberal Louis-Philippe. News from Paris inspired unrest elsewhere. In August 1830, after a performance in Brussels of an opera about a rebellion, crowds rose against Dutch rule; the mainly Catholic southern provinces resented the Protestant Dutch king's policies on language, religion and taxation. The great powers, meeting in London, chose to accept an independent Belgium rather than risk war, and in 1831 Leopold of Saxe-Coburg became king. Belgium's founding shows that a nation could be built on shared religion and opposition to outside rule even though its people spoke different languages, mainly Dutch (Flemish) and French. It also showed that the powers would tolerate change when it did not threaten the balance of power.
- 14Poland's Uprisings and the Great EmigrationPoland had vanished from the map after the partitions of 1772, 1793 and 1795 divided it among Russia, Prussia and Austria. Polish national feeling remained strong, especially among the nobility and educated classes. In November 1830 young officers in Warsaw rose against Russian rule in the November Uprising, but after nearly a year of war the Russian army crushed the revolt in 1831. Tsar Nicholas I abolished much of the Kingdom of Poland's autonomy, and thousands of Poles fled west in what became known as the Great Emigration. In exile, especially in Paris, poets such as Adam Mickiewicz portrayed Poland as a suffering nation that would rise again. A second revolt, the January Uprising of 1863–64, was also defeated and followed by intensified Russification. The uprisings failed militarily, but they kept the idea of Poland alive and shaped a national identity built around sacrifice and resistance until independence in 1918.
- 15Why Europe Exploded in 1848In 1848 revolutions broke out in dozens of cities across Europe within a few weeks, a wave later called the Springtime of Peoples. Several causes combined: economically, potato blight and poor grain harvests in 1845–47 drove up food prices, and a financial crisis caused unemployment among artisans and workers. Politically, liberals demanded constitutions, wider voting rights and a free press, while nationalists in Italy, Germany, Hungary and elsewhere wanted unity or self-government. Socially, growing cities contained many poor workers whose anger could be mobilized quickly. New technologies such as railways and the telegraph helped news of one revolution spread to the next. When the French king was overthrown in February, the example ignited Vienna, Berlin, Milan and Budapest. Historians debate the balance between hunger and ideas, but most agree that economic distress turned long-standing political grievances into revolution.
- 161848 in the Habsburg Lands: Vienna and PragueThe Austrian Empire was a dynastic state containing Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Italians, Croats, Serbs, Romanians and others, so 1848 was especially dangerous there. In March 1848 students and workers in Vienna forced Prince Metternich, the symbol of the conservative order, to resign and flee. National movements then advanced in different directions. Many German Austrians looked to the new parliament in Frankfurt and a united Germany. The Czech historian František Palacký refused an invitation to Frankfurt, arguing that the Slavs of the empire needed a reformed Austria to protect them from both German and Russian domination, a position called Austroslavism. In June a Slav Congress met in Prague, but an uprising there was crushed by General Windischgrätz. The empire's survival depended partly on playing nationalities against one another, as rival national goals divided the revolutionaries.
- 17Kossuth and the Hungarian RevolutionHungary had its own historic kingdom, nobility and parliament within the Habsburg lands, and in 1848 its liberal nationalists moved quickly. Led by Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian Diet passed the April Laws, creating a responsible Hungarian government, abolishing serfdom and ending noble tax privileges. Yet Hungarian leaders also insisted that Magyar be the language of government, which alarmed Croats, Serbs, Slovaks and Romanians living in the Kingdom of Hungary, who made up a large share of its population. The Croatian leader Josip Jelačić led troops against Hungary on the side of the dynasty. As relations with Vienna collapsed, Hungary declared independence in April 1849. Russia's Tsar Nicholas I then sent a large army to help Austria, and the Hungarian army surrendered at Világos in August 1849. The revolution shows how a nation fighting for its own freedom could clash with the national hopes of its own minorities.
- 18The Frankfurt ParliamentIn May 1848 elected delegates from across the German Confederation gathered in St Paul's Church in Frankfurt to create a united, constitutional Germany. Many were lawyers, professors and officials, which led critics to call it a 'parliament of professors'. Delegates debated basic rights and the borders of the new Germany. Supporters of a 'Greater Germany' (Grossdeutschland) wanted to include the German lands of Austria, while supporters of a 'Lesser Germany' (Kleindeutschland) wanted a Prussian-led state without Austria, since Austria would not abandon its non-German territories. The assembly also argued over Polish lands in Prussia and Danish-speaking areas of Schleswig. In March 1849 it adopted a constitution and offered the imperial crown to King Frederick William IV of Prussia, who refused a crown offered by an elected assembly. Without an army or royal support, the parliament collapsed in 1849, and its failure showed that national unity would need power as well as principles.
- 19Why the Revolutions of 1848 FailedBy late 1849 almost every revolution of 1848 had been defeated, and historians have identified several reasons. First, the revolutionaries were divided: middle-class liberals wanted constitutions and order, while workers and radicals wanted social change, and the June Days uprising in Paris showed how violently these groups could clash. Second, rival nationalisms undermined each other, as Hungarians, Croats, Czechs and Germans pursued incompatible goals. Third, the old regimes kept control of their armies; once kings regained confidence, troops retook Vienna, Berlin and Prague. Fourth, foreign intervention mattered, with Russia crushing Hungary and France restoring the Pope in Rome. Yet 1848 was not a total failure: serfdom was abolished in the Austrian Empire and was not restored, several constitutions survived, and a generation learned that nationalism needed power and calculation. The historian A. J. P. Taylor famously described 1848 as a turning point at which German history 'failed to turn'.
- 20Ireland: From O'Connell to the FamineIrish nationalism developed under direct British rule after the Act of Union of 1801 abolished the separate Irish parliament. Daniel O'Connell built one of Europe's first mass political movements, winning Catholic Emancipation in 1829, which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament. He then campaigned peacefully to repeal the Union, holding huge 'monster meetings', but called off a planned rally at Clontarf in 1843 when the government banned it. The Great Famine of 1845–52, caused by potato blight but worsened by government policy and continued food exports, killed about one million people and drove more than a million to emigrate. Many Irish blamed British rule for the scale of the disaster, and historians continue to debate the government's responsibility. The radical Young Ireland group attempted a small rising in 1848, which failed. The Famine left lasting bitterness, a large Irish diaspora in America and Britain, and a more determined nationalism.
- 21Mazzini and Young ItalyGiuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) was the leading prophet of Italian nationalism. In 1831, in exile in Marseille, he founded Young Italy, a secret society dedicated to creating a united, independent and republican Italy through popular insurrection. Mazzini believed that nations were part of a divine plan and that each people had a mission; a free Italy would join a peaceful brotherhood of free nations. He emphasized duties as well as rights, urging Italians to act and sacrifice for the nation. His many planned uprisings in the 1830s and 1840s failed, often leading to the arrest or execution of followers, and critics accused him of sending young men to their deaths. Yet his writing and organization spread the idea of Italy among educated people, and in 1849 he helped lead the short-lived Roman Republic. Although Italy was ultimately unified as a monarchy, not the republic he wanted, Mazzini is remembered as one of the 'fathers of the fatherland'.
- 22The Schleswig-Holstein QuestionThe duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, on the border between Denmark and Germany, show how nationalism turned old dynastic arrangements into bitter conflicts. Both duchies were ruled by the Danish king, but Holstein was mainly German-speaking and belonged to the German Confederation, while Schleswig had a mixed Danish and German population. Danish nationalists wanted to bind Schleswig more closely to Denmark, while German nationalists wanted both duchies to join Germany. In 1848 German-minded rebels rose against Denmark, starting the First Schleswig War (1848–51), which ended with the old arrangement restored under great-power pressure. When Denmark tried again to integrate Schleswig in 1863, Prussia and Austria went to war in 1864 and took the duchies. The dispute was so complex that Lord Palmerston reportedly joked that only three people had ever understood it. A plebiscite in 1920 finally divided Schleswig along national lines, a rare peaceful solution.
- 23Napoleon III and the Politics of NationalityLouis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, was elected president of France in December 1848, seized dictatorial power in a coup in 1851 and became Emperor Napoleon III in 1852. He presented himself as a champion of the 'principle of nationalities', the idea that peoples should be free to form their own states. This was partly genuine sympathy and partly strategy, since redrawing the 1815 map could weaken Austria and restore French prestige. He supported Piedmont against Austria in 1859, backed the union of Moldavia and Wallachia, the core of modern Romania, and gained Nice and Savoy for France in 1860 after plebiscites. Yet his policies helped create stronger neighbours. Italian unity left France facing a new kingdom, and his miscalculations over Prussia led to defeat and his own capture at Sedan in 1870. Napoleon III shows how a ruler could use nationalism as a foreign policy tool and be undone by the forces he encouraged.
- 24Realpolitik: Nationalism After 1848After the failures of 1848, many nationalists concluded that idealism and popular uprisings were not enough. In 1853 the German writer Ludwig von Rochau coined the term Realpolitik, politics based on practical power rather than principles. The new approach accepted cooperation with monarchs, armies and diplomacy if they could deliver national goals. In Italy, Cavour used alliances and limited wars to expand Piedmont; in Germany, Bismarck used Prussian military power. Many former liberals made peace with conservative states that promised unity, and nationalism itself changed: it became less tied to universal brotherhood and more focused on the strength and interests of one's own nation. The Crimean War of 1853–56 also weakened the Concert of Europe by splitting Austria from Russia, creating openings for ambitious states. The decades after 1848 therefore saw nationalism succeed, but often through war and calculation rather than through the barricades and parliaments of 1848.
- 25Italy Before Unification: 'A Geographical Expression'In 1847 Metternich dismissed Italy as merely 'a geographical expression', and in political terms he was right. After 1815 the peninsula was divided into several states: the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the northwest, Austrian-ruled Lombardy-Venetia, the duchies of Parma, Modena and Tuscany, the Papal States across the centre, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south. Austria dominated much of the peninsula, directly or through related ruling families. Italians spoke many regional dialects, and the literary Italian of Dante was the everyday language of only a small minority. Economic links between north and south were weak, and the south was largely agricultural and poorer. Many peasants felt loyalty to their town, region or Church rather than to 'Italy'. Nationalism was strongest among educated townspeople, students and exiles, and understanding this fragmentation explains why unification required both nationalist ideas and great-power diplomacy.
- 26Three Visions of ItalyItalian nationalists of the 1840s agreed that Italy should be freed from foreign domination but disagreed about what form it should take. Mazzini's democrats wanted a unitary republic created by popular revolution. The priest Vincenzo Gioberti, in his 1843 book On the Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians, proposed a 'neo-Guelph' federation of existing states under the presidency of the Pope; this idea gained hope briefly when Pius IX, elected in 1846, introduced reforms. Federalists such as Carlo Cattaneo wanted a loose union of self-governing regions on the Swiss or American model. Moderate liberals in Piedmont, such as Cesare Balbo, looked to the House of Savoy and the Piedmontese army to drive out Austria. The 1848 crisis tested each vision: Pius IX refused to wage war on Catholic Austria, and Mazzini's republic in Rome fell. Piedmont, which kept its constitution after 1849, emerged as the most credible leader.
- 27Italy in 1848–49: The First War and the Roman RepublicIn March 1848 the people of Milan rose against Austrian rule in the Five Days, driving out Marshal Radetzky's army, and Venice proclaimed a republic. King Charles Albert of Piedmont declared war on Austria, launching what Italians call the First War of Independence. Volunteers came from across Italy, but rulers were reluctant and cooperation was weak. Radetzky defeated the Piedmontese at Custoza in July 1848 and again at Novara in March 1849, after which Charles Albert abdicated in favor of his son, Victor Emmanuel II. Meanwhile radicals proclaimed a Roman Republic in February 1849 after the Pope fled the city, with Mazzini among its leaders and Giuseppe Garibaldi defending it. French troops sent by Louis-Napoleon besieged and captured Rome in July 1849, and Venice surrendered in August. The failures convinced many that Italians could not defeat Austria alone and needed a foreign ally.
- 28Cavour and the Rise of PiedmontCount Camillo Benso di Cavour, prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1852 (with a brief break), was a liberal aristocrat who admired British parliamentary government and economic progress. He modernized Piedmont by building railways, encouraging trade, reforming finances and reducing the power of the Church, making the small kingdom a model for Italian liberals. Cavour was not a romantic nationalist like Mazzini; historians debate whether he originally aimed at full unification or mainly at expanding Piedmont in northern Italy. What is clear is that he used diplomacy with great skill. By sending troops to the Crimean War, he earned a voice at the 1856 Congress of Paris, where he raised the Italian question. In July 1858 he met Napoleon III secretly at Plombières and agreed that France would help Piedmont drive Austria from northern Italy in return for Nice and Savoy. Cavour then manoeuvred Austria into declaring war, so that France would support Piedmont as the victim.
- 29The War of 1859: Magenta, Solferino and VillafrancaIn April 1859 Austria issued an ultimatum demanding that Piedmont disarm, and when Piedmont refused, Austria declared war, exactly as Cavour had hoped. French and Piedmontese armies defeated the Austrians at Magenta on 4 June and at Solferino on 24 June, two of the bloodiest battles of the century. Then Napoleon III, alarmed by the casualties, by Prussian mobilization on the Rhine and by the spread of revolution in central Italy, made a sudden armistice with Austria at Villafranca on 11 July without consulting Cavour; Piedmont gained Lombardy, but Austria kept Venetia. Cavour resigned in fury, though he returned to office in January 1860. Meanwhile popular movements in Tuscany, Parma, Modena and the papal Romagna expelled their rulers and voted, in plebiscites held in March 1860, to join Piedmont. To win French approval, Piedmont ceded Nice and Savoy to France. The war showed how unification moved forward through a mix of foreign armies, local uprisings and diplomatic bargaining.
- 30Garibaldi and the Expedition of the ThousandGiuseppe Garibaldi, a professional guerrilla fighter who had fought in South America and defended the Roman Republic, became the popular hero of Italian unification. In April 1860 a revolt broke out in Sicily against the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In early May Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa with about a thousand volunteers, the Redshirts, landing at Marsala in western Sicily. Cavour did not openly support the expedition but did not stop it. Helped by Sicilian rebels and peasants hoping for land, Garibaldi won at Calatafimi and took Palermo, then crossed to the mainland and entered Naples in September as the Bourbon state collapsed. Cavour feared that Garibaldi, a republican sympathizer, might march on Rome and provoke France, so Piedmontese troops moved south through the Papal States. Garibaldi chose to hand his conquests to Victor Emmanuel II. The expedition shows how popular action and monarchist diplomacy, though often in tension, together produced unity.
- 31The Kingdom of Italy Is ProclaimedOn 26 October 1860, Garibaldi met Victor Emmanuel II near Teano and greeted him as King of Italy, handing over southern Italy. Plebiscites in Naples, Sicily, the Marche and Umbria approved union by huge majorities, although voting was public and not truly free by modern standards. The first Italian parliament, elected on a very narrow franchise, met in Turin and proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861, with Victor Emmanuel II as king. The new state extended Piedmont's laws, constitution and administration across the peninsula, a process critics called 'Piedmontization'. Rome, protected by French troops, and Venetia, still Austrian, remained outside, and Cavour died suddenly on 6 June 1861, just months after the proclamation. The new kingdom faced enormous challenges: a large public debt, regional resentment, mass illiteracy and hostility from the Pope. Unification was a political achievement, but national unity still had to be built.
- 32Completing Italy: Venetia 1866 and Rome 1870Italy completed its territorial unification by taking advantage of other powers' wars: in 1866 Italy allied with Prussia against Austria. Italian forces lost on land at Custoza and at sea off Lissa, but Prussia's decisive victory forced Austria to give up Venetia, which was transferred via France and confirmed by a plebiscite. Rome remained under the Pope, protected by a French garrison; Garibaldi's attempts to seize it failed in 1862 and 1867. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, France withdrew its troops, and on 20 September 1870 Italian soldiers breached the walls of Rome at Porta Pia. A plebiscite approved annexation, and Rome became the capital in 1871. Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the new state and declared himself a 'prisoner in the Vatican'. Some Italian-speaking areas, such as Trento and Trieste, remained Austrian, fuelling an 'irredentist' movement that would shape Italy's choices in World War I.
- 33'Now We Must Make Italians'A famous saying, attributed to the writer and politician Massimo d'Azeglio, declared: 'We have made Italy; now we must make Italians.' Historians note that the exact wording may be a later paraphrase, but it captures a real problem. In 1861 most inhabitants spoke regional dialects; estimates of how many used standard Italian range from about 2.5 percent to around 10 percent. About three-quarters of the population could not read or write. The new state used several tools to build national identity: compulsory elementary schooling under the Casati and Coppino laws, military conscription that mixed young men from different regions, national railways, and the celebration of heroes such as Garibaldi. Books such as Edmondo De Amicis's Heart (1886) taught schoolchildren patriotic values. Progress was real but slow, and mass emigration, high taxes and regional inequalities meant many Italians felt distant from the state. Italy shows that creating a state and creating a shared national identity are different tasks.
- 34The Southern Question and BrigandageUnification exposed a deep divide between northern and southern Italy that became known as the Southern Question. The south was poorer, more rural and had higher illiteracy, and many southerners felt that the new state brought conscription, higher taxes and northern officials without the land reform they had hoped for. From 1861 to about 1865 the south saw widespread armed resistance, called 'brigandage' by the government. It combined banditry, peasant revolt and loyalty to the deposed Bourbon king. The state responded with large military operations and the 1863 Pica Law, which allowed military courts in affected areas; thousands were killed or imprisoned. Interpretations differ: some historians see a civil war or a colonial-style conquest, while others stress the long-standing poverty and lawlessness of the region. In later decades millions of southerners emigrated, and the Southern Question shows that national unification can create winners and losers within the same nation.
- 35The Roman Question: Church and NationThe capture of Rome in 1870 created a long conflict between the Italian state and the papacy, called the Roman Question. For the Catholic Church the Pope's temporal power over the Papal States had guaranteed his independence; for Italian nationalists, Rome was the natural capital of the nation. In 1871 the Italian parliament passed the Law of Guarantees, offering the Pope personal inviolability, use of the Vatican and an annual payment, but Pius IX rejected it and called himself a 'prisoner in the Vatican'. The papacy also discouraged Catholics from voting in national elections, a policy called non expedit, which kept many devout Italians apart from political life for decades. The restriction was eased in the early 1900s, and a Catholic party, the Italian People's Party, was founded in 1919. The dispute was finally settled by the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which created Vatican City as an independent state. The Roman Question shows how nationalism could clash with older religious and universal loyalties.
- 36Who Made Italy? Weighing the RisorgimentoItalian unification is often told through four heroes: Mazzini the prophet, Cavour the diplomat, Garibaldi the soldier and Victor Emmanuel II the king. This 'four fathers' story, popular in nineteenth-century textbooks, emphasizes unity and harmony, but historians have long questioned it. The four men often distrusted one another; Cavour feared Garibaldi's radicalism, and Mazzini rejected the monarchy. Many historians stress that foreign powers did much of the decisive work: France in 1859, Prussia in 1866 and 1870. Others, such as the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci, argued that the Risorgimento was a 'passive revolution' led by elites that failed to involve the peasant masses, leaving deep social divisions. More recent historians have examined how ordinary people experienced unification and how Risorgimento culture, including songs, novels and images, spread national feeling. Evaluating the Risorgimento means weighing ideas, leaders, foreign diplomacy and popular participation, rather than relying on a single heroic narrative.
- 37The German Confederation and the ZollvereinAfter 1815 the German lands were organized into the German Confederation, a loose league of 39 states with a diet in Frankfurt presided over by Austria. It had no common government, army or citizenship, and its main purpose was to preserve order. Yet economic integration advanced faster than political unity. Prussia, whose territory was split between east and west, created a customs union, the Zollverein, which came into effect on 1 January 1834 and removed internal tariffs among most German states except Austria. Railways, which expanded rapidly from the 1830s, tied German markets together, and the economist Friedrich List argued that a national economy needed national unity. Historians debate how far the Zollverein caused political unification: some see it as laying the foundations of a Prussian-led Germany, while others note that many Zollverein members sided with Austria in the war of 1866. Either way, it gave Prussia economic leadership and showed that Germany could function without Austria.
- 38Prussia and Austria: Rivals for GermanyThe question of German unity was also a contest between Austria and Prussia for leadership. Austria was the traditional senior power, ruling a multinational empire and presiding over the German Confederation. Prussia was smaller but had a strong army, an efficient bureaucracy and a growing industrial economy in the Rhineland and Silesia. After 1848 Prussia tried to form a union of German states under its leadership, but Austria, backed by Russia, forced it to back down in the Punctation of Olmütz in November 1850, which many Prussians called a humiliation. During the 1850s and 1860s the balance shifted. Prussia's coal and iron industries grew rapidly, while Austria suffered financial strain and defeat in Italy in 1859. Prussia also reformed its army under King William I and War Minister Albrecht von Roon, provoking a constitutional crisis with liberal deputies who refused to approve the budget, a crisis that brought Otto von Bismarck to power in 1862.
- 39Bismarck and 'Blood and Iron'Otto von Bismarck, a conservative Prussian landowner, was appointed minister-president in September 1862 to break the deadlock between the king and parliament. In a speech to the budget committee on 30 September, he declared that the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and majority decisions, which had been the mistake of 1848 and 1849, but by iron and blood. Bismarck then governed for four years without a legally approved budget, collecting taxes anyway. He was not a German nationalist in the romantic sense; his first loyalty was to Prussia and the monarchy, and he saw nationalism as a force to be harnessed for Prussian power. Historians debate whether he followed a master plan for unification or skilfully exploited opportunities as they arose. Most now stress his flexibility: he kept several options open and acted when circumstances favored him. His methods, combining diplomacy, deception and war, made him the outstanding example of Realpolitik.
- 40The Danish War of 1864The first of Bismarck's three wars of unification grew out of the Schleswig-Holstein question. In 1863 Denmark adopted a constitution binding Schleswig more closely to the Danish kingdom, which German nationalists saw as a violation of earlier agreements. German public opinion demanded action, and many wanted the duchies to become a new German state under a German duke. Bismarck instead persuaded Austria to act jointly with Prussia, claiming to uphold international treaties rather than nationalist demands. The two powers invaded in February 1864, and after the Prussian storming of the Dybbøl fortifications in April and further defeats, Denmark surrendered Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg in the Treaty of Vienna in October. The Gastein Convention of 1865 placed Schleswig under Prussian and Holstein under Austrian administration, an awkward arrangement that created future opportunities for conflict. The war showed Bismarck using nationalist enthusiasm while keeping control of the outcome for Prussia.
- 41The Seven Weeks' War of 1866In 1866 Bismarck turned on Austria. He prepared carefully: he secured Russian goodwill, which he had cultivated by supporting Russia during the Polish uprising of 1863, obtained French neutrality through vague hints of compensation, and signed an alliance with Italy promising it Venetia. Disputes over Holstein provided the pretext, and war broke out in June. Prussia's railways, the needle gun, a breech-loading rifle that could be fired lying down, and the planning of chief of staff Helmuth von Moltke gave it a decisive advantage. At Königgrätz (Sadowa) on 3 July 1866, the Prussian army defeated the main Austrian force. Bismarck then insisted, against the king and generals, on a lenient peace, taking no Austrian territory, so that Austria could become a future ally rather than a permanent enemy. The Peace of Prague dissolved the German Confederation and excluded Austria from German affairs, while Prussia annexed Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Nassau and Frankfurt, linking its eastern and western lands.
- 42The North German Confederation and the Liberal SplitAfter 1866 Prussia created the North German Confederation, uniting the states north of the River Main under Prussian leadership. Its constitution of 1867 provided a parliament, the Reichstag, elected by universal manhood suffrage, which was remarkably broad for the time, alongside a Federal Council representing the state governments, where Prussia dominated. The King of Prussia was president, and Bismarck was chancellor. The southern states of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt remained independent but signed secret military alliances with Prussia. The victory of 1866 also split German liberals: many accepted Bismarck's indemnity bill and formed the National Liberal Party, deciding that national unity was worth compromising on parliamentary power. Others, the Progressives, continued to oppose him on principle. The episode shows how military success could win over former opponents and how nationalism could pull liberals toward a conservative state.
- 43The Ems Telegram and the Franco-Prussian WarThe final step in unification came through war with France: in 1870 a Hohenzollern prince, a relative of the Prussian king, was offered the Spanish throne, alarming France, which feared encirclement. The candidacy was withdrawn, but the French ambassador met King William I at the spa town of Ems and asked for a guarantee that it would never be renewed. William politely refused and sent a telegram reporting the meeting to Bismarck, who shortened and published it in a way that made the exchange sound like a curt insult, knowing it would provoke France. French public opinion demanded war, and France declared war on 19 July 1870. The southern German states joined Prussia, as Bismarck had hoped, because France appeared to be the aggressor. German armies won rapidly, capturing Napoleon III at Sedan on 2 September, and Paris was besieged until January 1871. Historians still debate how far Bismarck planned the war and how far French leaders were responsible for the escalation.
- 44Proclaiming an Empire at VersaillesOn 18 January 1871 the German princes and military leaders gathered in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, while Paris was still under siege, and proclaimed King William I of Prussia as German Emperor. The choice of Versailles, the palace of Louis XIV, was a deliberate humiliation of France. The new German Empire was a federation of 25 states dominated by Prussia, which held about two-thirds of its territory and population. The Treaty of Frankfurt in May 1871 forced France to cede Alsace and most of Lorraine and to pay an indemnity of five billion francs. Many inhabitants of the annexed provinces did not wish to become German, and the loss created lasting French resentment. The empire was created 'from above' by princes and armies, not by an elected assembly as in 1848, and its constitution gave great power to the emperor and chancellor. Historians debate how far this origin shaped the later course of German history.
- 45Building the Reich: Kulturkampf and 'Enemies of the Empire'After 1871 the new empire faced the task of creating a common identity among Protestant Prussians, Catholic Bavarians, Poles, Danes and the people of Alsace-Lorraine. Bismarck sought unity partly by identifying groups he considered 'enemies of the Reich'. In the Kulturkampf ('culture struggle') of the 1870s, he and the National Liberals passed laws restricting the Catholic Church: the May Laws of 1873 placed clergy training under state control, the Jesuits were expelled in 1872, and civil marriage became compulsory. The campaign backfired, as Catholic voters rallied to the Centre Party, which grew stronger. Bismarck gradually abandoned the Kulturkampf from the late 1870s and turned against the socialists, passing the Anti-Socialist Laws in 1878, which also failed to stop the Social Democrats' growth. The new empire also developed national symbols, holidays and monuments. Historians see these campaigns as a form of negative integration, building unity by targeting supposed internal enemies, with lasting costs for German political culture.
- 46Minorities in the German Empire: Poles, Danes and AlsatiansThe German Empire contained significant national minorities. Roughly 2.5 to 3.5 million Poles lived in Prussia's eastern provinces, Danes in northern Schleswig, and French-speaking or French-oriented inhabitants in Alsace-Lorraine. Imperial governments increasingly pursued Germanization. In Prussian Poland, German was made the language of administration and, increasingly, of schooling; in 1885–86 about 30,000 Poles without Prussian citizenship were expelled; and the Settlement Commission, founded in 1886, bought land to settle German farmers. Polish communities responded by building their own cooperatives, banks and cultural societies, and in 1901 children in Września went on strike against religious instruction in German. In Alsace-Lorraine, the region was governed as an imperial territory rather than as a full state until 1911, and many residents left for France. These policies often strengthened rather than weakened minority national identities, showing the limits of assimilation imposed by the state.
- 47Comparing Italian and German UnificationItaly and Germany were unified within a decade of each other, and comparing them reveals both common patterns and important differences. In both cases a strong state, Piedmont or Prussia, led the process, and a skilled statesman, Cavour or Bismarck, used diplomacy and limited wars. Both exploited the weakening of Austria and the breakdown of the Concert of Europe after the Crimean War. But the differences matter: Prussia had a powerful army and industrial economy and largely won its own wars, while Italy depended heavily on French and Prussian victories. Popular movements, such as Garibaldi's expedition, played a larger role in Italy than in Germany. Germany emerged as a major industrial and military power, while Italy remained economically weaker and divided between north and south. Both states were created largely by elites, with limited popular participation, and both then faced the challenge of building a national identity across regions, religions and classes.
- 48Debating the German Path: The SonderwegAfter the catastrophe of Nazism, historians asked whether the way Germany was unified helped explain what came later. The Sonderweg ('special path') thesis, associated with historians such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler, argued that Germany industrialized rapidly but kept a political system dominated by aristocrats, the army and the monarchy, because unification came from above and liberals had compromised with Bismarck. On this view, Germany lacked the successful liberal revolution that other Western nations had, leaving its democracy weak. In 1984 the British historians David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley challenged this, arguing that there was no 'normal' Western path, that German society had a vigorous middle class and civil society, and that Britain and France were not models of smooth democratization either. Most historians now reject a simple straight line from Bismarck to Hitler, while agreeing that features of the 1871 settlement shaped later politics. The debate shows how historians test big explanations through comparison.
- 49The Habsburg Empire: A State of Many PeoplesThe Habsburg Monarchy was the clearest example of a multinational empire in an age of nationalism. Its subjects included Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians (often called Ruthenians), Romanians, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes and Italians, and no group formed a majority. The empire was held together by loyalty to the dynasty, the Catholic Church, the army, the bureaucracy and economic ties along the Danube. For centuries this worked because identity was based more on religion, region and status than on nationality. Nationalism challenged the empire's very logic: if each nation deserved its own state, the Habsburg Monarchy had no reason to exist. Yet most national movements before 1914 sought autonomy, language rights and fair representation within the empire rather than independence. Historians increasingly argue that the empire was not doomed to collapse and that it was the strains of World War I, rather than nationalism alone, that destroyed it in 1918.
- 50The Compromise of 1867 and the Dual MonarchyDefeat by Prussia in 1866 forced the Habsburgs to make peace with their most powerful national movement, the Hungarians. The Compromise (Ausgleich) of 1867 divided the empire into two halves: the Austrian lands, ruled from Vienna, and the Kingdom of Hungary, ruled from Budapest, each with its own parliament and government. They shared a monarch, Franz Joseph, who was emperor of Austria and king of Hungary, along with common ministries for foreign affairs, war and joint finances. The Compromise satisfied Hungary's ruling elite but left other nationalities dissatisfied. In the Hungarian half, governments pursued Magyarization, promoting the Hungarian language in schools and administration, while Croatia received limited autonomy in 1868. Czechs resented that they had not received a similar settlement for the historic Kingdom of Bohemia. Supporters argue the Compromise preserved the empire for another fifty years; critics argue it entrenched two dominant nations and blocked broader reform.
- 51The Czech and Slovak National RevivalsThe Czech national revival shows how a cultural movement could become a political force. In the late eighteenth century, German dominated government, education and high culture in Bohemia and Moravia, and Czech was spoken mainly by peasants and the urban lower classes. Scholars such as Josef Dobrovský studied the Czech language, and Josef Jungmann produced a great five-volume Czech-German dictionary between 1834 and 1839. The historian František Palacký wrote a history of the Czech nation that portrayed the Hussites as a heroic chapter. Czech societies, newspapers, theatres and the Sokol gymnastics movement, founded in 1862, spread national culture to the masses. The National Theatre in Prague, funded largely by public donations, opened in 1881 and, after a fire, reopened in 1883. Slovaks, living under Hungarian rule, built their own movement; in the 1840s Ľudovít Štúr codified a standard Slovak language; these revivals match Miroslav Hroch's model: from scholars, to activists, to mass movements.
- 52Language Wars: The Badeni CrisisIn Austria-Hungary, language was not just a cultural matter; it determined who got government jobs, how courts worked and which schools children attended. In April 1897 the Austrian prime minister, Count Kasimir Badeni, issued language ordinances for Bohemia and Moravia requiring officials to conduct business in both German and Czech within a few years. Czechs welcomed the change, since most educated Czechs already knew German. But many German Bohemians, who seldom spoke Czech, saw it as a threat to their jobs and status. German deputies used obstruction in the Austrian parliament, including marathon speeches and physical scuffles, and riots broke out in Vienna, Graz and Prague. Badeni was forced to resign in November 1897, and the ordinances were withdrawn in 1899, angering Czechs in turn. The Badeni crisis paralyzed Austrian parliamentary politics for years, showing how language disputes could become zero-sum struggles in which each side feared losing ground.
- 53The Ottoman Empire and the Eastern QuestionThe Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans, Anatolia and much of the Arab world for centuries, governing a population of many religions and languages. Under the millet system, religious communities such as Orthodox Christians, Armenians and Jews had considerable autonomy over their own religious, educational and legal affairs. In the nineteenth century, however, the empire declined relative to Europe's industrial powers, and Balkan peoples increasingly defined themselves by nationality. European diplomats called the problem of what would happen to Ottoman territory the Eastern Question. Russia sought influence over Orthodox Christians and access to the Mediterranean; Austria feared Russian expansion and Slavic nationalism; Britain wanted to protect routes to India and generally supported the empire's survival. Nationalism therefore became tangled with great-power rivalry, and Balkan independence movements often succeeded only when a great power backed them. Tsar Nicholas I is said to have called the empire 'the sick man of Europe', though its decline is now seen as more uneven than that label suggests.
- 54Tanzimat and the Idea of OttomanismOttoman reformers tried to answer nationalism with reform: the Tanzimat ('reorganization') era began with the Edict of Gülhane in 1839, which promised security of life and property and fair taxation for all subjects. The Reform Edict of 1856 went further, promising equality for Muslims and non-Muslims in taxation, military service and access to office. Reformers promoted Ottomanism, the idea that all subjects, whatever their religion or language, could share a common Ottoman citizenship and loyalty. In 1876 the empire adopted its first constitution and opened a parliament. But Sultan Abdulhamid II suspended the constitution in 1878 during war with Russia and ruled autocratically for thirty years, increasingly emphasizing Islam as a source of unity. Ottomanism faced resistance from some Muslims who resented losing their privileged status and from Christian nationalists who wanted independence rather than equality. Historians debate whether the reforms came too late or whether nationalism made a shared Ottoman identity impossible.
- 55Serbia's Road to IndependenceSerbia was the first Balkan people to win autonomy from the Ottomans in the nineteenth century. The First Serbian Uprising began in 1804 under Karađorđe (Black George), at first against abuses by local Janissary commanders, and grew into a struggle for self-rule before it was crushed in 1813. A Second Uprising in 1815, led by Miloš Obrenović, combined fighting with negotiation, and Serbia gained recognized autonomy in 1830. Rivalry between the Karađorđević and Obrenović dynasties shaped Serbian politics for a century. Language reform by Vuk Karadžić, who standardized written Serbian on the basis of the spoken language, strengthened national identity. Serbia won full independence at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and became a kingdom in 1882, and many Serbian nationalists dreamed of uniting all Serbs, including those under Ottoman and Habsburg rule. After 1903, a new dynasty oriented Serbia toward Russia and against Austria-Hungary, setting the stage for conflict.
- 56Bulgaria: The April Uprising and the Congress of BerlinBulgarian nationalism developed first through culture and religion, as Bulgarians campaigned for schools teaching in Bulgarian and for a church independent of the Greek-dominated Patriarchate of Constantinople, winning a separate Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870. In April 1876 revolutionaries launched the April Uprising, which was suppressed with great brutality; thousands of civilians were killed. Reports reached Europe, and in Britain the former prime minister William Gladstone published a famous pamphlet condemning the atrocities, shaking British support for the Ottomans. Russia declared war in 1877 and, after victory, imposed the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating a large Bulgarian state. Britain and Austria-Hungary, fearing a Russian satellite, forced a revision at the Congress of Berlin in July 1878, which divided Bulgaria into an autonomous principality and the province of Eastern Rumelia. Bulgarians united the two in 1885 and declared full independence in 1908. Berlin left many Bulgarian nationalists dissatisfied, fuelling later conflicts.
- 57The Young Turks and Turkish NationalismBy the early twentieth century, many educated Ottoman officers and officials believed that only radical change could save the empire. A secret organization, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), known in Europe as the Young Turks, forced Sultan Abdulhamid II to restore the 1876 constitution in July 1908. The revolution was initially celebrated by Muslims, Christians and Jews alike as a new era of equal citizenship. But crises followed quickly: Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria declared independence in 1908, Italy seized Libya in 1911–12, and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 cost almost all remaining European territory. After a coup in 1913, a CUP triumvirate ruled. As the empire lost its Christian-majority provinces, CUP leaders moved from Ottomanism toward a Turkish nationalism that emphasized Turkish language and identity, influenced by thinkers such as Ziya Gökalp. This shift had grave consequences for minorities during World War I.
- 58The Balkan Wars of 1912–13The Balkan Wars show how rival nationalisms could unite against a common enemy and then turn on each other. In 1912 Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro formed the Balkan League, encouraged by Russia, and attacked the Ottoman Empire in October. Within weeks they had driven Ottoman forces from most of Europe, and Albania declared independence in November 1912. The Treaty of London in May 1913 confirmed Ottoman losses, but the victors disagreed over dividing Macedonia, a region of mixed Bulgarian, Greek, Serbian, Albanian and Turkish populations claimed by several states. In June 1913 Bulgaria attacked its former allies and was defeated by Serbia, Greece, Romania and the Ottomans in the Second Balkan War. The Treaty of Bucharest in August 1913 left Bulgaria resentful, Serbia enlarged and confident, and Austria-Hungary alarmed by Serbian power. Civilians suffered heavily, many were displaced, and the wars made the Balkans, in a phrase of the time, a powder keg.
- 59Russification in the Tsarist EmpireThe Russian Empire contained Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Finns, Baltic peoples, Georgians, Armenians, Jews, many Muslim peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and others; by the 1897 census, Russians formed less than half the population. After the Polish January Uprising of 1863, and especially under Alexander III (1881–94), the government pursued Russification, promoting the Russian language, Orthodox Christianity and centralized administration. The Valuev Circular of 1863 and the Ems Ukaz of 1876 restricted publishing in Ukrainian, and Polish was pushed out of schools and administration. In Finland, which had enjoyed broad autonomy, the February Manifesto of 1899 began to limit its self-government, provoking mass petitions and resistance. Jews faced discriminatory laws and violent pogroms. Rather than creating loyalty, Russification often strengthened the national movements it targeted, and in the 1905 Revolution many nationalities demanded rights and autonomy. Historians debate how consistent these policies were, since they varied by region and period.
- 60Norway 1905: A Peaceful SeparationNot every national separation involved war: in 1814 Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden, but Norwegians quickly adopted their own constitution at Eidsvoll on 17 May 1814. After a brief war, Norway entered a union with Sweden under the Swedish king while keeping its own constitution, parliament (the Storting) and government. During the nineteenth century, Norwegian national identity grew through literature, language reform, folklore collection and the celebration of 17 May. Tensions focused on Norway's demand for its own consular service abroad. On 7 June 1905 the Storting declared the union dissolved. In an August referendum, Norwegians voted overwhelmingly for dissolution, and Sweden, after tense negotiations and military preparations on both sides, accepted the outcome in the Karlstad agreements. A second vote confirmed a monarchy, and a Danish prince became King Haakon VII. Norway's case shows that negotiation, democratic legitimacy and restraint can resolve national separation peacefully.
- 61Mass Nationalism: Schools, Conscription and the PressBetween about 1870 and 1914, nationalism spread from educated elites to the mass of ordinary people. States built national school systems that taught a standard language, national history and patriotic songs; France's Jules Ferry laws of 1881–82 made primary education free, compulsory and secular. Universal male conscription in most continental countries placed young men from different regions in the same barracks under the national flag. Railways, cheap newspapers and rising literacy created shared national news, while new holidays, monuments and anthems gave people rituals of belonging. In his 1976 book Peasants into Frenchmen, the historian Eugen Weber argued that many rural French people only came to think of themselves as French in these decades. Critics replied that Weber underestimated earlier national feeling and peasants' own choices. Either way, by 1914 most Europeans identified with their nation far more strongly than their great-grandparents had, a change that helps explain the mass enthusiasm and sacrifice of the coming war.
- 62Jingoism and Imperial NationalismIn the late nineteenth century, nationalism became increasingly linked to empire, rivalry and pride in national power. The word 'jingoism' came from a British music-hall song of 1878, during a crisis with Russia, whose chorus began 'We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do', and the word came to mean aggressive, boastful patriotism that favored war. Popular newspapers, such as Britain's Daily Mail founded in 1896, competed for readers with sensational stories of imperial adventure and foreign threats. Social Darwinism, a misapplication of Darwin's ideas to societies, encouraged the belief that nations were locked in a struggle for survival in which only the strongest would thrive. Organizations such as the German Navy League and the Pan-German League lobbied for expansion and armaments. Critics at the time, including many liberals and socialists, warned that this mood made compromise harder. Historians see imperial nationalism as an important part of the atmosphere in which governments made decisions before 1914.
- 63Herzl and the Birth of Political ZionismZionism, the movement for a Jewish national home in the historic Land of Israel, emerged in the late nineteenth century as a response to persistent antisemitism and to the rise of nationalism in Europe. Violent pogroms in the Russian Empire after 1881 drove many Jews to emigrate, and some joined groups such as the Lovers of Zion, which supported settlement in Ottoman Palestine. Theodor Herzl, a Viennese journalist, was shaken by the antisemitism surrounding the Dreyfus affair in France, in which a Jewish army officer was falsely convicted of treason in 1894. In The Jewish State (1896), Herzl argued that Jews were a nation and needed a state of their own. He organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. Zionism was debated among Jews themselves: some favored assimilation, others socialism or religious approaches. The land was already inhabited by an Arab population, a fact that would shape a long and contested history between two national movements.
- 64Pan-Movements: Pan-Slavism and Pan-GermanismPan-nationalist movements sought to unite all people of a broad linguistic or cultural family across existing borders. Pan-Slavism held that Slavic peoples, such as Russians, Poles, Czechs, Serbs and Bulgarians, shared a common identity and destiny. Early versions, such as the Prague Slav Congress of 1848, were cultural and stressed cooperation among equals, but later Russian Pan-Slavists, such as Nikolai Danilevsky in Russia and Europe (1869), imagined Russian leadership of the Slavs against the West. This alarmed Austria-Hungary, which ruled millions of Slavs, while many Poles, who resented Russian rule, rejected it. Pan-Germanism aimed to unite all German speakers, including those in Austria-Hungary, the Baltic and beyond. The Pan-German League, founded in 1891, combined this goal with aggressive expansionism and antisemitism. Both movements were influential minorities rather than official policy, but they heightened mutual suspicion between Germanic and Slavic powers and helped frame the rivalries of 1914 as racial or civilizational struggles.
- 65Young Bosnia and the Shots at SarajevoThe assassination that triggered World War I grew out of South Slav nationalism. Austria-Hungary had occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878 and annexed it in 1908, angering Serbia and many Bosnian Serbs who hoped to unite with Serbia or to form a wider South Slav (Yugoslav) state. Young Bosnia was a loose movement of mostly young students, Serb, Croat and Bosnian Muslim, who embraced revolutionary nationalism and admired political assassination as a tool. Some of its members received weapons and help crossing the border from the Black Hand, a secret society of Serbian officers led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, known as Apis. On 28 June 1914, during a visit to Sarajevo, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, and his wife Sophie were shot by Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb. Historians debate how much the Serbian government knew. The assassination shows how a small nationalist group, acting within a tense international system, could set off a chain of events far beyond its intentions.
- 66The Spirit of 1914 and the Failure of InternationalismBefore 1914 many socialists believed that working people's class solidarity would prevent war between nations. The Second International, a federation of socialist parties, had passed resolutions urging workers to oppose war. When war came in August 1914, however, almost every major socialist party supported its own government. In Germany the Social Democrats voted for war credits on 4 August, and in France socialists joined a 'Sacred Union' of national unity. The French socialist leader Jean Jaurès, a determined opponent of war, had been assassinated by a nationalist on 31 July. Crowds cheered in several capitals, and volunteers enlisted in large numbers, especially in Britain, which relied on volunteers until 1916. Historians now argue that the so-called 'spirit of 1914' has been exaggerated: enthusiasm was strongest among urban middle classes, while many rural and working-class people reacted with anxiety; still, national loyalty proved far stronger than international class solidarity.
- 67Wilson, Lenin and the Promise of Self-DeterminationDuring World War I the principle of national self-determination, the right of peoples to choose their own government, moved to the centre of world politics. The Bolsheviks, after seizing power in Russia in November 1917, proclaimed the right of nations to self-determination, partly to undermine the empires of their enemies. In January 1918 US President Woodrow Wilson set out his Fourteen Points, calling for the 'autonomous development' of the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, an independent Poland and readjusted borders along lines of nationality; in a February 1918 speech he declared self-determination an 'imperative principle of action'. Wilson's words were heard far beyond Europe, inspiring nationalists in Egypt, India, China and Korea. But Wilson had Europe mainly in mind, and the peacemakers did not apply the principle to the colonies of the victors. The gap between universal language and selective application caused deep disillusionment, a period historian Erez Manela has called 'the Wilsonian moment'.
- 68The New Nation-States of 1918The collapse of the Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires at the end of World War I created a wave of new or restored nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe. Finland declared independence in December 1917; Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia followed in 1918. Czechoslovakia was proclaimed in Prague on 28 October 1918, Poland was restored in November 1918, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later Yugoslavia, was formed on 1 December 1918. Hungary became a separate state, and the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 left it with less than a third of its pre-war territory, with millions of ethnic Hungarians outside its borders. The new map was closer to national lines than the old one, but populations were so mixed that every new state contained significant minorities. Czechoslovakia, for instance, included over three million Germans. The new states faced border wars, economic difficulties and disputes over minorities that would shape the interwar years.
- 69Protecting Minorities: The League of Nations TreatiesThe peacemakers of 1919 knew that the new borders left millions of people as national minorities, so they created an international system to protect them. Poland signed the first Minorities Treaty on 28 June 1919, the same day as the Treaty of Versailles, and similar obligations were imposed on Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and several other states. These treaties guaranteed equality before the law, freedom of religion and the right to use minority languages in some schools and courts. The League of Nations could receive petitions from minorities, though not as courts of law. The system had real limits: it applied only to new or enlarged states, not to the great powers, which many smaller states saw as hypocritical, and enforcement was weak. In 1934 Poland renounced its obligations, and Nazi Germany later exploited minority grievances, especially among Germans in Czechoslovakia, to justify expansion. The treaties are nevertheless seen as an important early step toward international human rights protection.
- 70From Sèvres to Lausanne: Turkish Nationalism and the RepublicAfter the Ottoman defeat in 1918, the Allies imposed the Treaty of Sèvres in August 1920, which would have left the Ottomans only a small part of Anatolia, giving territory to Greece, envisaging an Armenian state and a possible Kurdish autonomy, and placing zones under foreign influence. Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal rejected the treaty and organized a government in Ankara. In the Turkish War of Independence (1919–23), they defeated Greek, Armenian and French forces and forced the Allies to negotiate again. The Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923 recognized a Turkish state with most of Anatolia and eastern Thrace. A compulsory population exchange agreed in January 1923 moved about 1.2 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and about 400,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey. The Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on 29 October 1923, and Kemal, later called Atatürk, launched secular, nationalist reforms. Kurdish hopes for self-rule were not fulfilled, and the population exchange caused great suffering, so the settlement is remembered differently by different peoples.
- 71Ireland: From the Easter Rising to the Free StateBy 1914 Parliament had passed an Irish Home Rule Act granting limited self-government, but it was suspended for the war and fiercely opposed by Ulster unionists, mostly Protestant, who wished to remain in the United Kingdom. On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, a small group of republicans seized buildings in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Rising was crushed within a week and had little public support at first, but the execution of fifteen of its leaders in Ireland shifted opinion sharply. In the 1918 general election the republican party Sinn Féin won most Irish seats and set up its own parliament, the Dáil, in January 1919. A guerrilla War of Independence followed until a truce in 1921. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 created the Irish Free State, a self-governing dominion, while six northern counties, partitioned earlier under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, remained in the United Kingdom. Disagreement over the Treaty led to a civil war in 1922–23, showing how independence can divide a national movement.
- 72From Integral Nationalism to FascismIn the decades around 1900, a new 'integral' nationalism emerged that placed the nation above all other values, including individual rights, democracy and international law. The French writer Charles Maurras, whose movement Action Française was founded in the late 1890s, coined the term and attacked parliamentary democracy, Jews and foreigners as threats to the nation. After World War I, this radical nationalism fed into fascism. In Italy, resentment over a 'mutilated victory', in which wartime promises of territory were only partly honored, and fear of socialist revolution helped Benito Mussolini come to power after the March on Rome in October 1922. Fascism glorified the nation, the state and war, rejected liberal democracy and suppressed opponents. In Germany, Nazism combined extreme nationalism with a racial ideology that defined the nation by supposed 'blood' and excluded Jews and others, leading ultimately to persecution and genocide. Comparing these movements shows how nationalism, when it denies the equal dignity of others, can become a tool of dictatorship.
- 731919: A Year of Anti-Colonial UprisingsThe year 1919 saw a remarkable wave of nationalist protest across Asia and Africa, inspired partly by talk of self-determination at the Paris Peace Conference. In Egypt, a British protectorate since 1914, the arrest and exile of the nationalist leader Saad Zaghlul in March sparked a revolution of strikes and demonstrations involving peasants, students, workers and women; Britain eventually declared Egyptian independence, with major limits, in 1922. In Korea, under Japanese rule since 1910, activists read a Declaration of Independence on 1 March, and peaceful demonstrations spread nationwide before being harshly suppressed. In China, students protested in Beijing on 4 May against the peace conference's decision to transfer German rights in Shandong to Japan, launching the May Fourth Movement. In India, troops fired on an unarmed crowd at Amritsar in April, killing hundreds. These movements largely failed to win immediate independence, but they turned nationalism into a mass force and convinced many activists that freedom would have to be won rather than granted.
- 74Pan-Africanism: From London 1900 to Manchester 1945Pan-Africanism is the idea that people of African descent, in Africa and across the diaspora, share common interests and should unite against racism and colonialism. It grew among Black intellectuals in the Caribbean, the United States, Britain and West Africa. In 1900 the Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams organized a Pan-African Conference in London, where W. E. B. Du Bois declared that the problem of the twentieth century was 'the problem of the color line'. Du Bois later organized a series of Pan-African Congresses beginning in Paris in 1919. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, founded in Jamaica in 1914, built a mass movement emphasizing racial pride, economic self-reliance and a return to Africa. The Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945 marked a shift: attended by future leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta, it demanded independence for African colonies. Pan-Africanism thus moved from protest and cultural pride toward a political program for independence.
- 75Indian Nationalism: From the Congress to Quit IndiaIndian nationalism developed over six decades, shifting from petitions by an educated elite to one of history's largest mass movements. The Indian National Congress, founded in Bombay in 1885, first sought a greater Indian role in government. The partition of Bengal in 1905 provoked the Swadeshi movement, which boycotted British goods, and leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak demanded self-rule, or swaraj. Mohandas Gandhi, who returned from South Africa in 1915, transformed the movement through satyagraha, nonviolent resistance, mobilizing peasants and the urban poor in the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22) and the Salt March of 1930. In 1942 Congress launched the Quit India Movement, and its leaders were imprisoned. Indian nationalism was also contested: the All-India Muslim League, founded in 1906, increasingly argued that Muslims formed a separate nation, and B. R. Ambedkar pressed for the rights of Dalits. These debates over who the Indian nation included shaped independence and Partition in 1947.
- 76Sun Yat-sen and Chinese NationalismModern Chinese nationalism grew out of humiliation by foreign powers and frustration with the Qing dynasty, which was Manchu rather than Han Chinese. Sun Yat-sen, a doctor educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong, founded the Revive China Society in 1894 and the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui) in Tokyo in 1905. His Three Principles of the People called for nationalism (ending foreign domination and, at first, Manchu rule), democracy and the people's livelihood, a program of social and economic justice. After a military uprising at Wuchang on 10 October 1911, provinces broke away from the Qing, and the Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 January 1912 with Sun as provisional president. Sun soon handed power to the general Yuan Shikai, and China fragmented under regional warlords. Sun reorganized his Nationalist Party (Guomindang), accepted Soviet help and allied with the new Communist Party in 1923–24, before his death in 1925. Sun is honored as a founding figure in both mainland China and Taiwan, an unusual shared legacy.
- 77The Arab Revolt and Broken PromisesArab nationalism grew in the late Ottoman Empire through a cultural revival, the Nahda, which promoted Arabic language and literature, and through political societies that sought autonomy as the Young Turks emphasized Turkish identity. In 1915–16 the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Henry McMahon, exchanged letters with Sharif Hussein of Mecca, appearing to promise support for Arab independence in return for a revolt against the Ottomans. The Arab Revolt began in June 1916, with British support including the officer T. E. Lawrence, and Arab forces under Hussein's son Faisal entered Damascus in 1918. But in the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of May 1916, Britain and France had already planned to divide the region into zones of influence, and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. After the war, the League of Nations mandate system placed Syria and Lebanon under France and Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan under Britain. Many Arabs regarded these overlapping commitments as betrayal, a grievance that shaped Arab nationalism for decades.
- 78Nasser and the Dream of Arab UnityPan-Arabism held that Arabic-speaking peoples from Morocco to Iraq form one nation that should be politically united. It drew on the Arab revival, resentment of colonial borders and, after 1948, defeat in the war over Palestine. The Ba'ath Party, founded in Damascus in 1947 by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, promoted 'unity, freedom, socialism'. Pan-Arabism's most famous leader was Gamal Abdel Nasser, an army officer who helped overthrow Egypt's monarchy in 1952. His nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956 and his political survival after the British, French and Israeli attack that followed made him a hero to many Arabs, and his speeches reached millions by radio. In 1958 Egypt and Syria merged as the United Arab Republic, but Syria withdrew in 1961, resenting Egyptian dominance. Arab defeat in the 1967 war badly damaged Pan-Arabism, and its decline shows the strength of individual state identities and the difficulty of uniting nations with different interests.
- 79Négritude and Cultural NationalismNot all anti-colonial nationalism began with politics; some began with poetry. In the 1930s, Black students from France's colonies who met in Paris, including Aimé Césaire of Martinique, Léopold Sédar Senghor of Senegal and Léon-Gontran Damas of French Guiana, launched Négritude, a literary and philosophical movement. Rejecting the French colonial claim that assimilation into French culture was the path to civilization, they celebrated African history, culture and identity. Césaire's long poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939) became a founding text, and Senghor later became the first president of independent Senegal in 1960. Négritude influenced cultural nationalism across Africa and the Caribbean, and the journal Présence Africaine, founded in 1947, gave African writers an international platform. Critics, including Frantz Fanon and the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, argued that Négritude risked accepting the idea of a fixed 'African essence'. The debate shows how anti-colonial nationalism wrestled with questions of culture and identity, not only of political power.
- 80Two National Movements, One Land: Israel and PalestineThe conflict over Israel and Palestine is, at its core, a clash between two national movements claiming the same land. Zionism sought a Jewish national home in the historic Land of Israel, and Jewish immigration grew under the British Mandate, especially as persecution in Europe intensified in the 1930s. Palestinian Arab nationalism developed in opposition to the Mandate and to Zionist settlement, and a major Arab revolt took place in 1936–39. In November 1947 the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states; Jewish leaders accepted the plan, while Arab leaders rejected it. Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948, and war followed; Israelis remember 1948 as their War of Independence; Palestinians remember it as the Nakba ('catastrophe'), when about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled. In the years and decades that followed, hundreds of thousands of Jews also left Arab countries, many for Israel. Understanding both national narratives is essential for studying a conflict that remains unresolved.
- 81Nationalism and the Breakup of the USSR and YugoslaviaIn the late twentieth century, nationalism helped dissolve two multinational communist federations. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms after 1985 allowed more open discussion, and national movements grew rapidly. On 23 August 1989, about two million people in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined hands in a human chain, the Baltic Way, to protest Soviet occupation. Lithuania declared independence in March 1990, and after a failed coup in Moscow in August 1991, the other republics followed, and the USSR dissolved in December 1991 into fifteen states, largely peacefully, though conflicts broke out in parts of the Caucasus and Moldova. Yugoslavia's breakup was far more violent: after Tito's death in 1980 and economic crisis, politicians such as Slobodan Milošević in Serbia and Franjo Tuđman in Croatia mobilized nationalism. Wars in Croatia, Bosnia and later Kosovo killed well over 100,000 people and included genocide at Srebrenica in 1995. Comparing the two cases raises the question of why similar collapses produced such different levels of violence.
- 82Independence Movements in DemocraciesNationalism remains a force even within long-established democracies, where some regions with distinct identities seek greater autonomy or independence. In Canada, the mainly French-speaking province of Quebec held two referendums on sovereignty: in 1980, about 60 percent voted no, and in 1995 the 'no' side won by only about one percentage point. Canada's Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that Quebec could not secede unilaterally, but that a clear majority on a clear question would oblige negotiations. In the United Kingdom, Scotland held an agreed independence referendum in 2014, in which about 55 percent voted to remain. In Spain, the Catalan regional government held a referendum in October 2017 that Spain's Constitutional Court had suspended as unconstitutional; the subsequent declaration of independence was not recognized, and Spain imposed direct rule temporarily. These cases raise difficult questions on which reasonable people disagree: who counts as 'the people' entitled to decide, how secession should be decided, and how to balance regional identity with national unity and constitutional law.
- 83Banal Nationalism: Flags, Sport and Everyday IdentityNationalism is often imagined as dramatic: revolutions, wars and independence movements. In 1995 the social psychologist Michael Billig argued that in established nations it is mostly 'banal', reproduced quietly every day. Examples include flags hanging unnoticed outside public buildings, weather maps showing only the national territory, news that speaks of 'the economy' and 'our' team, coins, stamps and the national anthem before a game. Because these reminders are so routine, people rarely notice them, yet they constantly mark the world as divided into nations and remind citizens which one is theirs. International sport offers a vivid example: events such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, held since 1930, organize competition by national team and can produce intense national feeling. Billig argued that this everyday nationalism is the background that allows 'hot' nationalism to be mobilized quickly in a crisis. His idea helps explain why national identity can seem natural even though historians show it was constructed.
- 84Patriotism, Nationalism and the Future of the NationAfter two centuries of nationalism, people still debate whether it is a force for good or harm. Defenders point out that nationalism inspired movements against empire and foreign rule, gave people a sense of belonging and solidarity, and underpinned democracies in which citizens accept obligations to one another. Critics point to wars, persecution of minorities, population transfers and genocide carried out in the nation's name. In 1945 George Orwell distinguished patriotism, devotion to a place and way of life one does not wish to impose on others, from nationalism, which he linked to the desire for power. The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore had warned against nationalism in lectures in 1917, while also writing songs that became national anthems. Today, debates continue about globalization, migration, regional integration and the place of national identity in a connected world. Historians cannot settle these debates, but the history of nationalism gives evidence for weighing them, and shows that nations are human creations whose meaning citizens continue to shape.