Nationalism and Statebuilding for AP European History (page 2)

The review questions for this study guide can be found at:

Nationalism and Statebuilding Review Questions for AP European History

Introduction

In the second half of the nineteenth century, nationalism triumphed over all the other competing ideologies. In areas where people lived under foreign domination, nationalism was used by conservative statesmen to bring about the unification of Italy and Germany. In the Hapsburg Empire, the nationalist aspirations of ethnic minorities worked to undermine Austrian domination. In France and Russia, the force of nationalism was used to end the remaining dreams of liberals and to strengthen the hold of autocratic rulers.

The End of Liberal Nationalism

In the first half of the nineteenth century, liberals and nationalists tended to ally themselves against the forces of conservatism. Both believed that political sovereignty resided in the people, and they shared an optimistic belief that progress towards their goals was inevitable. Campaigns for liberal reform (which attempted to break the conservative aristocracy's grip on political power and to promote individual rights) tended to merge with the struggle for national rights or self-determination. Accordingly, most liberals supported in principle the idea of a free and unified nation state in Germany and Italy, the rebirth of Poland, and Greek independence; most conservatives opposed these ideas.

However, both partial victory and eventual defeat drove a wedge between liberals and nationalists. When liberals won temporary victories over conservative aristocrats between 1830 and 1838, fundamental differences between the agendas of liberal reformers and nationalists began to emerge. The emphasis on individual liberty and limited government did not mesh well with the nationalist emphasis on the collective national tribe or with the desire of nationalists for a strong national government. In short, liberals believed in promoting the rights of all peoples; nationalists cared only about their own rights.

When, in 1848, the more radical liberal agenda of democratic reform emerged, the conservative tendencies of nationalism came to the fore. Nationalists not only shared the conservatives' belief in the value of historical traditions but also tended to mythologize the past and dream of the return of an era of national glory. Ultimately, however, what drove a wedge between liberals and nationalists was the failure of liberals to hold the power they had temporarily seized. As the conservative reaction in the second half of 1848 smashed liberal movements everywhere in Europe, nationalists dreaming of a strong unified country free from foreign rule increasingly turned to conservative leaders.

The Unification of Italy

The Forces Against Unity in Italy

The settlement after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 had greatly disappointed those hoping for an Italian nation state. The Italian peninsula consisted of separate states controlled by powerful enemies of Italian nationalism:

• The Hapsburg Dynasty of Austria controlled, either directly or through its vassals, Lombardy and Venetia in the north, and the duchies of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena.
• The pope governed an area known as the Papal States in central Italy.
• A branch of the Bourbon dynasty (which ruled France) controlled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south.
• An Italian dynasty, the House of Savoy, controlled both the Island of Sardinia in the south and Piedmont in the northwest.

In addition to political divisions and foreign interests, the Italian peninsula was also divided by economic and cultural differences:

• The northern areas of the peninsula were well developed economically and more sophisticated culturally than the still largely rural and agricultural areas of the south.
• Culturally, the people of the more developed northern region felt little connection to the poor peasants in the south, who often spoke an entirely different dialect.
• Socially and politically, the middle-class merchants and manufacturers, located mostly in the north, wanted a greater degree of unity for easier trade and tended to support liberal reforms; they were opposed by the staunchly conservative, traditional landed elites.

The Unification of Germany

Forces Against Unity in Germany

Unlike Italy, Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century was free of direct foreign domination. It existed as a loose confederation of independent states. Within that loose confederation, several forces worked against national unity:

• cultural differences between the rural, conservative, Protestant north and the urban, liberal, Catholic south
• a long history of proud independence on the part of the individual German states
• the powerful influence of Hapsburg Austria, which controlled or influenced a large portion of the German Confederation

Prussian Leadership

With the failure of the liberal Frankfort Assembly in 1848, leadership in the German nationalist movement passed to Prussia. Prussia was a strong northern kingdom ruled by the Hohenzollern dynasty and supported by a powerful class of landed aristocrats known as Junkers. Prussia also had the strongest military in Germany, and led the way in establishing the Zollverein, a large free-trade zone. This combination of military and economic power led many Germans to look to Prussia for leadership.

Bismarck and War with Denmark and Austria

In 1861, Prussia's new monarch, William I, wanted to reorganize and further strengthen the military, but the liberal legislature resisted, and a power struggle between the monarch and the legislature ensued. William turned to the conservative Junker Otto von Bismarck to be his prime minister. Bismarck forced a showdown, and it quickly became apparent that the support of the Prussian people was with the king, the army, and Bismarck. With the power of the army and the government fully established, Bismarck set out on a policy to unify Germany under the Prussian crown that has come to be known as Realpolitik, which asserted that the aim of Prussia policy would be to increase its power by whatever means and strategies were necessary and useful. Bismarck asserted that the unification of Germany would be accomplished by a combination of "blood and iron."

Bismarck quickly concluded that a war with Austria was inevitable, and he engineered one in an episode that has come to be known as the Schleswig–Holstein Affair. He began by enlisting Austria as an ally in a war with Denmark over two duchies, Schleswig and Holstein, that had a large German-speaking population. Once Denmark was forced to cede the two duchies, Bismarck provoked an argument with Austria over control of them. Bismarck's next moves were a perfect illustration of Realpolitik in action:

• First, Bismarck obtained Italian support for a war with Austria by promising Italy the province of Venetia.
• Next, he ensured Russian neutrality by supporting Russia's actions against its rebellious Polish subjects.
• Then, he met secretly with Napoleon III of France and persuaded him that a weakening of Austrian power was in the best interests of France.
• Finally, and only after those preparations were in place, he carried out a series of diplomatic and military maneuvers that provoked Austria into declaring war.

In the resulting Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Prussian troops surprised and overwhelmed a larger Austrian force, winning victory in only seven weeks. The result was that Austria was expelled from the old German Confederation and a new North German Confederation was created, which was completely under the control of Prussia.

War with France

All that remained was to draw the south German states into the new Confederation. But the south (which was predominantly Catholic and liberal) feared being absorbed by the Protestant and authoritarian Prussians. Bismarck concluded that only one thing would compel the south Germans to accept Prussian leadership: a war with a powerful foreign enemy. So he set about engineering one.

The opportunity came when both France and Prussia got involved in a dispute over the vacant throne in Spain. Bismarck, with the support of the Prussian military leadership, edited a communication between Napoleon III and William I (a communication that is now known as the Ems telegram) to make it seem as though they had insulted one another, and Bismarck released this telegram to the press. Tempers flared, and France declared war. The south German states rallied to aid Prussia. Combined German forces quickly routed the French troops, capturing Napoleon III, and taking Paris in January of 1871.

The Second Reich

On January 18, 1871, the unification of Germany was completed. The heads of all the German states gathered in the Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles outside Paris and proclaimed William I Kaiser (emperor) of the German Empire (formally the Second Reich, honoring the old Holy Roman Empire as the first Reich). The new empire took the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from France and billed the French 5 billion francs as a war indemnity.

Nationalism in the Hapsburg Empire

In an age of nation-building, the Hapsburg Empire, with its Austrian minority dominating an Empire consisting of Hungarians (also known as Magyars), Czechs, Serbs, Romanians, and other ethnic groups, was an anachronism. The forces of nationalism, therefore, worked to tear it apart. After Austria's defeat by Prussia in 1866, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph attempted to deal with what has come to be called "the nationalities problem." By agreeing to the Compromise of 1867, he set up the dual monarchy of Austria–Hungary, where Franz Joseph served as the ruler of both Austria and Hungary, each of which had its own parliament. This arrangement essentially set up an alliance between the Austrians and the Hungarians against the other ethnic groups in the empire.

Nationalism in France

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had originally been elected president of the Second Republic in 1848. When the National Assembly refused to amend the constitution to allow him to run for a second term, he staged a coup d'état on 2 December 1851. The public overwhelmingly sided with Louis-Napoleon, who granted them universal manhood suffrage. They responded, in two plebiscites, by voting to establish a Second Empire and to make Louis-Napoleon hereditary emperor.

Like his namesake, Louis-Napoleon attempted to increase his popularity by expanding the Empire, but soon his foreign adventures began to erode his popularity. By 1870, the liberal parliament had begun to reassert itself. The humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War brought down both Louis-Napoleon and the Second Empire; it also set in motion a battle between monarchists and the people of Paris who, having defended Paris from the Germans while the aristocrats fled, now considered themselves to represent the nation of France.

Nationalism in Russia

At midcentury, Russia's government was the most conservative and autocratic in Europe. The peasants of Russia were still bound to the land by serfdom. The Crimean War (1853–1856), in which Russia essentially battled Britain and France for control of parts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, damaged the reputation of both the tsar and the military. Alexander II, who ascended to the throne in 1855, was determined to strengthen Russia by reforming and modernizing it. He abolished serfdom, made the judiciary more independent, and created local political assemblies.

However, Russia was plagued by its own nationalities problem. Alexander attempted to deal with it by relaxing restrictions on the Polish population within the Russian Empire, but this fanned the flames of nationalism and led to an attempted Polish Revolution in 1863. Alexander responded with increased repression of Poles and other ethnic minorities within the Russian Empire. And after an attempt on his life in 1866, Alexander gave up all notions of liberal reform, and proceeded to turn Russia into a police state.

Rapid Review

The failure of the revolutions of 1848 broke the fragile alliance between liberalism and nationalism. The unification of northern Italy under Victor Emmanuel II was accomplished through the statesmanship of the conservative Count Camillo Cavour. The Romantic nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi led a massive popular uprising and took control of southern Italy, then presented it to Victor Emmanuel in the name of Italian unity to create the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. The remaining two areas, Venetia and Rome, came into Italy in 1866 and 1870, respectively.

Germany was unified under William I of Prussia through the machinations of the conservative Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck. A unified German Empire, called the Second Reich, was proclaimed, following a Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The Hapsburg Empire was plagued by a nationalities problem and became Austria–Hungary in 1867. France's defeat led to the fall of the Second Empire, while Alexander II turned Russia into a police state.

The review questions for this study guide can be found at:

Nationalism and Statebuilding Review Questions for the AP European History Exam