THE UNREADEN TALES OF HISTORY

RISE OF NATIONALISM IN EUROPE [PART-4]

The Making of Germany and Italy

→Germany – Can the Army be the Architect of a Nation?

After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association

with democracy and revolution. Nationalist sentiments were often

mobilised by conservatives for promoting state power and achieving

political domination over Europe.

This can be observed in the process by which Germany and Italy came

to be unified as nation-states. As you have seen, nationalist feelings were

widespread among middle-class Germans, who in 1848 tried to unite

the different regions of the German confederation into a nation-state

governed by an elected parliament. This liberal initiative to nation-building

was, however, repressed by the combined forces of the monarchy and

the military, supported by the large landowners (called Junkers) of Prussia.

From then on, Prussia took on the leadership of the movement for

national unification. Its chief minister, Otto von

Bismarck, was the architect of this process carried

out with the help of the Prussian army and

bureaucracy. Three wars over seven years – with

Austria, Denmark and France – ended in Prussian

victory and completed the process of unification.

In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I,

was proclaimed German Emperor in a ceremony

held at Versailles.

On the bitterly cold morning of 18 January 1871,

an assembly comprising the princes of the

German states, representatives of the army,

important Prussian ministers including the chief

minister Otto von Bismarck gathered in the

unheated Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles

to proclaim the new German Empire headed

by Kaiser William I of Prussia.

The nation-building process in Germany had

demonstrated the dominance of Prussian state

power. The new state placed a strong emphasis

on modernising the currency, banking, legal

and judicial systems in Germany. Prussian

measures and practices often became a model for

the rest of Germany.

→Italy Unified

Like Germany, Italy too had a long history of political fragmentation.

Italians were scattered over several dynastic states as well as the

multi-national Habsburg Empire. During the middle of the

nineteenth century, Italy was divided into seven states, of which

only one, Sardinia-Piedmont, was ruled by an Italian princely house.

The north was under Austrian Habsburgs, the centre was ruled by

the Pope and the southern regions were under the domination

of the Bourbon kings of Spain. Even the Italian language had

not acquired one common form and still had many regional and

local variations.

During the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini had sought to put together a

coherent programme for a unitary Italian Republic. He had also

formed a secret society called Young Italy for the dissemination of

his goals. The failure of revolutionary uprisings both in 1831 and

1848 meant that the mantle now fell on Sardinia-Piedmont under

its ruler King Victor Emmanuel II to unify the Italian states through

war. In the eyes of the ruling elites of this region, a unified

Italy offered them the possibility of economic development and

political dominance. Chief Minister Cavour who led the movement to unify the regions

of Italy was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat. Like many

other wealthy and educated members of the Italian elite, he spoke

French much better than he did Italian. Through a tactful diplomatic

alliance with France engineered by Cavour, Sardinia-Piedmont

succeeded in defeating the Austrian forces in 1859. Apart from regular

troops, a large number of armed volunteers under the leadership of

Giuseppe Garibaldi joined the fray. In 1860, they marched into South

Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and succeeded in winning

the support of the local peasants in order to drive out the Spanish

rulers. In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united

Italy. However, much of the Italian population, among whom rates

of illiteracy were very high, remained blissfully unaware of liberal-

nationalist ideology. The peasant masses who had supported Garibaldi

in southern Italy had never heard of Italia, and believed that ‘La Talia’

was Victor Emmanuel’s wife!

→The Strange Case of Britain

The model of the nation or the nation-state, some scholars have

argued, is Great Britain. In Britain the formation of the nation-state was not the result of a sudden upheaval or revolution. It was the

result of a long-drawn-out process. There was no British nation

prior to the eighteenth century. The primary identities of the people

who inhabited the British Isles were ethnic ones – such as English,

Welsh, Scot or Irish. All of these ethnic groups had their own cultural

and political traditions. But as the English nation steadily grew in

wealth, importance and power, it was able to extend its influence

over the other nations of the islands. The English parliament, which

had seized power from the monarchy in 1688 at the end of a

protracted conflict, was the instrument through which a nation-state,

with England at its centre, came to be forged. The Act of Union

(1707) between England and Scotland that resulted in the formation

of the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain’ meant, in effect, that

England was able to impose its influence on Scotland. The British

parliament was henceforth dominated by its English members. The

growth of a British identity meant that Scotland’s distinctive culture

and political institutions were systematically suppressed. The Catholic

clans that inhabited the Scottish Highlands suffered terrible repression

whenever they attempted to assert their independence. The Scottish

Highlanders were forbidden to speak their Gaelic language or

wear their national dress, and large numbers were forcibly driven

out of their homeland.

Ireland suffered a similar fate. It was a country deeply divided

between Catholics and Protestants. The English helped the Protestants

of Ireland to establish their dominance over a largely Catholic country.

Catholic revolts against British dominance were suppressed. After a

failed revolt led by Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen (1798),

Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801.

A new ‘British nation’ was forged through the propagation of a

dominant English culture. The symbols of the new Britain – the

British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble

King), the English language – were actively promoted and the older

nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union.

→Visualising the Nation

While it is easy enough to represent a ruler through a portrait or a

statue, how does one go about giving a face to a nation? Artists in

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found a way out by

personifying a nation. In other words they represented a country as

if it were a person. Nations were then portrayed as female figures.

The female form that was chosen to personify the nation did not

stand for any particular woman in real life; rather it sought to give

the abstract idea of the nation a concrete form. That is, the female

figure became an allegory of the nation.

You will recall that during the French Revolution artists used the

female allegory to portray ideas such as Liberty, Justice and the

Republic. These ideals were represented through specific objects or

symbols. As you would remember, the attributes of Liberty are the

red cap, or the broken chain, while Justice is generally a blindfolded

woman carrying a pair of weighing scales.

Similar female allegories were invented by artists in the nineteenth

century to represent the nation. In France she was christened

Marianne, a popular Christian name, which underlined the idea of a

people’s nation. Her characteristics were drawn from those of Liberty

and the Republic – the red cap, the tricolour, the cockade. Statues

of Marianne were erected in public squares to remind the public of

the national symbol of unity and to persuade them to identify with

it. Marianne images were marked on coins and stamps.

Similarly, Germania became the allegory of the German nation. In

visual representations, Germania wears a crown of oak leaves, as

the German oak stands for heroism.

→ Nationalism and Imperialism

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century nationalism no longer

retained its idealistic liberal-democratic sentiment of the first half

of the century, but became a narrow creed with limited ends. During

this period nationalist groups became increasingly intolerant of each

other and ever ready to go to war. The major European powers, in

turn, manipulated the nationalist aspirations of the subject peoples

in Europe to further their own imperialist aims.

The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871

was the area called the Balkans. The Balkans was a region of

geographical and ethnic variation comprising modern-day Romania,

Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina,

Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro whose inhabitants were broadly

known as the Slavs. A large part of the Balkans was under the control

of the Ottoman Empire. The spread of the ideas of romantic

nationalism in the Balkans together with the disintegration of the

Ottoman Empire made this region very explosive. All through the

nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire had sought to strengthen

itself through modernisation and internal reforms but with very

little success. One by one, its European subject nationalities broke

away from its control and declared independence. The Balkan

peoples based their claims for independence or political rights on

nationality and used history to prove that they had once been

independent but had subsequently been subjugated by foreign

powers. Hence the rebellious nationalities in the Balkans thought of

their struggles as attempts to win back their long-lost independence.

As the different Slavic nationalities struggled to define their identity

and independence, the Balkan area became an area of intense conflict.

The Balkan states were fiercely jealous of each other and each hoped

to gain more territory at the expense of the others. Matters were

further complicated because the Balkans also became the scene of

big power rivalry. During this period, there was intense rivalry among

the European powers over trade and colonies as well as naval and

military might. These rivalries were very evident in the way the Balkan

problem unfolded. Each power – Russia, Germany, England,

Austro-Hungary – was keen on countering the hold of other powers

over the Balkans, and extending its own control over the area. This

led to a series of wars in the region and finally the First World War. Nationalism, aligned with imperialism, led Europe to disaster in 1914.

But meanwhile, many countries in the world which had been

colonised by the European powers in the nineteenth century began

to oppose imperial domination. The anti-imperial movements that

developed everywhere were nationalist, in the sense that they all

struggled to form independent nation-states, and were inspired by

a sense of collective national unity, forged in confrontation with

imperialism. European ideas of nationalism were nowhere

replicated, for people everywhere developed their own specific variety

of nationalism. But the idea that societies should be organised into

‘nation-states’ came to be accepted as natural and universal.

~CHAPTER ENDS~