The Growth of Nationalism in Europe!

A nation may be described as a community having a common homeland, a

common culture and common traditions.

European nationalism, in its modern sense, was born out of the desire of a
community to assert its unity and independence. In the 19th century there began a
determined struggle to realise nationalist aspirations.

The French Revolution had inspired people all over Europe. It spread the ideas of
liberty, equality and fraternity and generated the spirit of nationalism.

Napoleon, though he established a monarchy in France, carried forward the

revolutionary ideals of equality and nationalism.

Napoleon’s empire gave to Europe a form of unity, even though it was imposed by
him through conquests. A new concept emerged which bound people together with a
sense of belonging and unity. Nations began to be formed by those who shared a
common tradition and common territory.

Between 1830 and 1848, a number of revolutions broke out. Though most of them
failed, a few of these revolutions succeeded. Belgium rose in revolt against the union with
Holland and the consequent Dutch domination.

In a conference held in London, the European powers declared that Belgium would
be an independent country. In 1831 Belgium was created a separate kingdom with
Leopold as the king.While Belgium was successful, the Polish revolt was crushed by
Russia.

Greece was under Turkey. Towards the end of the 18th century the national
consciousness of the Greeks was stimulated by an intellectual revival which recalled the
glories of the ancient Hellas.

The struggle for independence began in 1821. By the Treaty of Adrianople (1829)
Turkey recognised the independence of Greece. The republic that was set up in Greece
was replaced by a monarchy in 1832. The independence of Greece was an incident of
great significance. It provided the first example of the victory of nationalism since the
downfall of Napoleon.
 The Austrian Empire was composed of a number of kingdoms inhabited by
different races, speaking different languages and having different cultures. There were
the Germans in Austria, the Czechs in Bohemia, the Magyars in Hungary, the Poles in
Galicia, the Italians in Lombardy and Venice and the Slavs in south-east Austria. All these
peoples had become conscious of their national unity and had developed national
aspirations.

Revolts had broken out in France in 1830 and 1848. The Revolt of 1848 ushered
in a period of widespread revolts throughout the Austrian Empire. The Magyars of
Hungary and the Slavs of Bohemia clamoured for national autonomy and constitutional
government.

Finally in 1867 Hungary was recognised as an independent kingdom. A nationalist

movement had also started in Prague. There the Czechs rose in a nationalist revolt
demanding self-government for their kingdom. Austrian Emperor was forced to recognise
the Czech Government. Though temporarily successful, most of these movements within
the Austrian Empire ultimately ended in disaster.

The Triumph of Nationalism in Europe:

Unification of Italy:
After the downfall of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna met mainly to redistribute
the territories occupied by the French. The makers of the Vienna Settlement tried to
prevent the spread of the ideas of democracy and nationalism. Despite their efforts, liberal
ideas were gaining ground.

Italy had been divided into small kingdoms and principalities. Napoleon, through his
conquests, brought the country under a single administrative unit. The Italians imbibed
the revolutionary ideals of liberty and nationalism and became conscious of the need for
their own national integration.

The fall of Napoleon again led to the disintegration of Italy. Austria got back Lombardy
and Venetia, the Pope controlled Rome and Central Italy, Naples and Sicily were restored
to the Bourbon family, Modena, Parma and Tuscany became independent duchies and
kingdoms of Sardinia-Piedmont, Genoa and Savoy came under King Victor Emmanuel II.
Thus Italy was reduced to a mere “geographical expression”.
In Italy, already a movement was going on for liberating these countries and uniting them
into one State. Giuseppe Mazzini, who organised the ‘Young Italy’ movement, roused the
enthusiasm of the Italians and kept alive the flame of nationalism.

In 1848, as in other parts of Europe, a revolutionary uprising started in Italy. But the
struggle ended in failure. After 1848, the Sardinian King’s able Prime Minister, Count di
Cavour, took the initiative of uniting Italy under Victor Emmanuel II.

The failure of the movement of 1848 made it clear to Cavour that Italian unification could
be accomplished only with the assistance of strong powers like Austria and France.
Cavour secured the goodwill of France when the Sardinian army joined the Crimean War
in support of France.

With the support of France (under Napoleon III), Cavour fought with Austria (1859).
Austria was ousted from Lombardy which was annexed to Sardinia. At this stage, the
central Italian states, Parma, Modena and Tuscany, joined Sardinia Piedmont under
Victor Emmanuel.

Meanwhile, an uprising broke out in Naples and Sicily. The revolutionary leader,
Giuseppe Garibaldi, with his thousand ‘Red Shirts’ (soldiers), marched to Naples and
Sicily in support of the revolts there. The Kingdom of the two Sicilies was liberated in
1860. Naples and Sicily (known as the kingdom of the two Sicilies) joined Sardinia.
Garibaldi was a republican, yet he supported, against his own conviction, the union of
Italy under the crown.

Cavour dispatched an army to occupy the Pope’s principality which was conquered within
a very short time. Thus by 1861, the whole of Italy, excepting Venetia and Rome, was
united. Venetia was under Austria and Rome was ruled by the Pope.

Finally, Venetia was ceded to Italy by Austria in 1866 when Austria was weakened by the
Prussian War. When Prussia attacked France in 1870, the Italian army occupied Rome.
The unification of Italy was complete; Rome became the capital of united Italy.

The Unification of Germany:

Like Italy, Germany was also divided into small kingdoms. There were about three
hundred small kingdoms and principalities in Germany. After conquering Germany,
Napoleon Bonaparte had formed a confederation of the Rhine consisting of thirty nine
states created out of the former three hundred states. The Germans, under Napoleon’s
rule, became familiar with democratic and nationalist ideas.

After the downfall of Napoleon, these thirty nine German kingdoms were reorganised into
a loose German Confederation with Austria as its president. Though Austria was a sworn
enemy of democracy and liberalism, German nationalist aspirations did not die out.

The person responsible for the unification of all these small German kingdoms was Otto
von Bismarck. Bismarck, the greatest statesman of all times, was appointed by King
William I as the Chancellor (1862) (Prime Minister) of Prussia.

Bismarck devoted himself to the task of uniting the German states under Prussia. Already
after the failure of the 1848 Revolution, Prussia had emerged as the undisputed leader of
Germany. Bismarck believed that German unification could be achieved only through a
policy of ‘blood and iron’, i.e. the use of military force. This was so because Austria, which
was the President of the German confederation, would not easily give up her leadership
of the confederarus, France was also hostile to the idea of a strong united Germany as
her neighbour.

Bismarck achieved his aim of unifying Germany through three wars against Denmark,
Austria and France. Bismarck first allied with Austria against Denmark. Defeated by the
joint forces of Austria and Prussia, Danish king handed over Schleswig and Holstein to
Prussia and Austria.

Austria and Prussia, however, fell out over their rights on the two provinces. In the war of
1866, Bismarck succeeded in defeating Austria. As a result Austria resigned from the
German Confederation and her supremacy in North Germany was fully abolished. Prussia
gained control over the North German states. The King of Prussia became the hereditary
head of the north German states. Venetia was given to Italy.

The third war was fought against France in 1870-71. France was provoked to declare war
against Prussia. When Napoleon III declared war on Prussia in 1870, the Southern
German states joined the North in the Franco-German war. France was completely
defeated in the war (Battle of Sedan). The German victory led to the political unification
of Germany. The Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed Emperor of Germany. The
spirit of nationalism brought about the unification of Germany. Within a short time a united
Germany emerged as a powerful force in European polity.

The History of American Nationalism

At a recent campaign rally in Houston, Donald Trump broke a linguistic taboo by

calling himself, loudly and proudly, a “nationalist.” Leaders of major American political
parties generally have avoided applying that term to themselves, no matter how much
they figuratively wrap themselves in the national flag and voice patriotic
themes. Critical commentary about Trump’s choice of words has focused on the idea
that “nationalist” in this context is bowdlerized shorthand for “white nationalist.” Trump’s
rhetoric is worthy of condemnation. But to dismiss the terminology is to miss some
other important issues about American nationalism.

Americans, since long before Trump, have been a highly nationalist people,
notwithstanding their reluctance to apply the label nationalist to themselves. Most often
the substitute term, willingly self-applied across most of the U.S. political spectrum, is
“American exceptionalism.” The satisfying implication of this term is that nationalism is
something in which narrow-minded foreigners wallow and which they apply for narrow-
minded purposes, whereas the United States is not just different but better than
everyone else and stands for noble and broadly applicable principles. Of course,
veneration of one’s own nation as not only different but supposedly better than anyone
else is what nationalism is all about, regardless of whether it is called exceptionalism
or something else.

There is a genuinely exceptional aspect of American nationalism, however, that dates

to colonial times. John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, a French nobleman who fought
in the French and Indian War before settling as a farmer in New York, published near
the end of the Revolutionary War a treatise in which he posed the question “What is an
American?” He answered it by saying that Americans “are a mixture of English, Scotch,
Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race
now called Americans has arisen.” As other races and ethnicities fully entered the
picture, the American melting pot has not always smoothly produced a well-blended
stew, but the concept that Americans are not defined by blood or ethnicity has endured.
Sometimes it has taken a fix such as the 14th Amendment, which recognized as
citizens all persons born in the country, even if they once were slaves or something
else.

This type of nationalism—based on territory and political principles and not on blood—
is exceedingly rare. The multiethnic empires of old represented not melting pots but
instead the subjugation of subordinate nationalities to a dominant one. The Soviet
Union claimed to be a multi-ethnic state based on political principles of its founding
fathers, but besides being ephemeral it was as much a story of Russian nationalism.
India has claimed to be the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional home for all South
Asians, but it is politically dominated by “Hindu nationalism,” which is a South Asian
counterpart of white nationalism.

The more that an American leader’s explicitly avowed “nationalism” implies any kind of
exclusion or ethnic preference, the more it is a repudiation of American exceptionalism.
Rather than being exceptional, the view being expressed is just one more instance of
narrow-minded nationalism, being applied for narrow-minded purposes.

Now that Trump has taken nationalism out of the linguistic closet, Americans should
use this opportunity to face more squarely some foreign policy implications of their own
nationalism and their reluctance to recognize it as such. Five years ago I wrote
an article in The National Interest that characterized the global political era in which the
world had entered as the “age of nationalism.”

As for the American nationalism that Americans did not want to call nationalism, I
offered this advice: “Americans should understand how much their own first inclinations
for interacting with the rest of the world stem from the same kind of nationalist urges
that underlie inclinations in other countries, however much the American version is
portrayed differently by affixing the label of exceptionalism. They should bear in mind
that first inclinations and urges are not always in the best interest of the nation that is
the object of their affection and attachment. U.S. policy makers should be continually
conscious of how U.S. actions may step on someone else’s nationalist sentiments,
eliciting the sort of counteractions that almost always are elicited when competing
nationalist perspectives confront each other.”

Rise of Nationalist Movements in Asia!

Indian nationalism with its specific features was the first nationalist movements to emerge
in the colonies.

By the early years of the twentieth century movements for national liberation had begun
to emerge in other parts of Asia, notably in Indo-China, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines
and Iran.

In Iran, after a series of revolts, the Shah of Iran had been forced to agree to transform
Iran into a constitutional monarchy with a parliament, called Majlis. With the support of
foreign powers, particularly Russia, the Shah re-established his despotic rule and the
Majlis were abolished.
In China, a number of revolutionary organisations emerged which later consolidated to
form the Chinese Revolutionary League. The president of this League was Dr Sun Yat-
sen, who played the leading role in the national awakening of the Chinese people and
uniting the various revolutionary groups together.

The League was guided by three principles enunciated by Dr Sun Yat-sen. These
principles were: nationalism, democracy, and livelihood (the last one is sometimes
referred to as socialism). In specific terms, these principles meant the ending of the rule
of the Manchu dynasty which had been ruling China since the middle of the seventeenth
century, and the establishment of a democratic republic with equitable attribution of land
among the populace.

In 1911, revolution swept southern China and on 1 January 1912, China was proclaimed
a republic with its headquarters at Nanjing (Nanking). Dr Sun Yat-sen was made the
president of the republic. In the meantime, in northern China, some steps had been taken
to introduce constitutional monarchy in China, with General Yuan Shih-kai as prime
minister. To avoid a conflict between the governments in control of northern and southern
China, from Beijing (Peking) and Nanjing respectively, a compromise was reached.

The Manchu ruler abdicated and thus the imperial rule in China came to an end. Yuan
Shih-kai was recognised as the president and he was entrusted with the task of calling
the parliament. Yuan Shih-kai was supported by foreign powers.

In 1913, he called the parliament but soon dismissed it. He had dreams of declaring
himself emperor. In the meantime, Dr Sun Yat-sen had formed the Guomindang
(Kuomintang) or the National Party and had given a call for a “second revolution”. Yuan
was able to suppress the Guomindang, which was banned, and Dr Sun sent to exile.

In 1916, Yuan died and China came under the rule of warlords, who controlled different
parts of the country and received financial support from foreign powers. When the First
World War ended, the national and revolutionary movement in China entered a new
phase. By the early years of the twentieth century the Ottoman Empire had lost most of
its territories in Europe. Most of her possessions in North Africa had also been taken over
by European colonial powers.
In the countries of West Asia—Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and Arabia— nationalist
feelings had been on the rise. Within Turkey, there were powerful stirrings against the
tyranny of the Sultan and for making Turkey a modern democratic and secular state.

The movement was led by a group of intellectuals, reformers and army officers, called the
Young Turks. Threatened by a rebellion, the Sultan, in 1908, agreed to restore the
constitution, which had been first introduced in 1876.”Some Young Turks were in favour
of giving equal rights to the Arabs of the Ottoman Empire while others were bent on
maintaining Turkish supremacy and even extending it.

Ultimately, Turkey, due to the failure of the liberal Young Turks, was drawn into the First
World War on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the British succeeded in
pursuing their imperialist ambitions in the Arab world by making use of the anti-Ottoman
Arab nationalist feelings.