Nationalism and the Making of Nation States in Italy and Germany

Battle Hymn of the Republic: La Marseillaise

• The enduring legacy and influence of the French Revolution in 19^th century Europe:
  • the foundation of democratic republicanism as a new model of good government
    
  • the establishment of a revolutionary tradition based on the belief that revolution was a positive means of bringing about desired political and social change, greater degrees of social justice and equality, and widespread political participation by excluded classes, be they be the bourgeoisie and/or the working people.
    
  • the political history of 19th century Europe centered on the on-going struggle of liberal, democratic, and national aspirations against countervailing efforts to restore international and domestic stability, to repress signs of revolt or revolution, and to restore essentials of the “Old Order” or the “Old Regime.”
  
  
• Conclusion: A Major Claim.

The Struggle to defeat Napolen and the French dreams of internal hegemony succeeded on the battlefield of Waterloo and in the meeting rooms of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. And yet the struggle to defeat the French Revolution failed. In the 1820s, this failure was evident in the seizure of independence by the Greeks and by Latin American countries (Chile, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, and Mexico), just as it was evident in the winning of independence by Belgians in 1830 and in the successful revolutions in France in 1830 and 1848. These events showed that the central political thrust of the French Revolution could not be readily contained: no regime deemed legitimate could long endure that did not incorporate representative government and some degree of popular participation.

The Battle of Nations: A Monument Speaks of National Liberation (1813), National Unification, National Identity and Power.

• Nationalisms: Political (France) vs. Cultural (Germanies)
• French nationalism: sovereignty resides in the "nation." Revolutionary wars prompt "national feelings" in the Germanies and elsewhere through resistance to French conquests and occupations.
• German cultural nationalism
• Leopold von Ranke, historian, expressing the meaning of German cultural nationalism in 1836:
  A national spirit lived within each German despite the absence of a unified German state:“Germany lives in us. We enact it
• . . .we cannot escape it. The mysterious something the informs the lowest among us precedes any form of government and animates and permeates all its forms.”  
• divine right nationalism of Giuiseppi Mazzini (1805-1872) another version of cultural nationalism in the absence of a unified state
• authoritarian nationalism of Otto von Bismark (1815-1898), "realpolitik" (realistic power politics), national unification of Germany by "Iron and Blood." ( speech of 1862)
  
  
• Revolutions of 1848: liberal, nationalist movements from "below" that failed

• Germanies: Bonn, Berlin, Dresden, Stuttgart, Munich, and Baden
  • Frankfurt Assembly, 1848-1849
  • Carl Schurz (Reminiscences excerpt on Bonn in 1848)
• Austrian Empire: Vienna, Prague, Budapest (Louis Kossuth)
• Italy: Milan, Florence, Rome, and Palermo
  
• See the account by Spielvogel, including the chronology of events.

National Unifications from "above" that succeeded through war and diplomacy

• Italy 1859-1870
  • Camillo Cavour (1818-1861)
  • Victor Emmanuel II King of Piedmont and then of Italy
  • Garibaldi
  • 1861 Kingdom of Italy created
  • 1866 Annexation of Venetia enlarges the kingdom
  • 1870 Incorporation of Rome and Papal State completes the unification
  • Map
• Germany 1860-1871 Map

• Otto von Bismark, the Iron Chancellor (1815-1898) of Prussian and then the German Empire. Unification by "iron and blood."
• 1860 annexation to Prussia of Schleswig-Holstein seized from Danmark with Austrian approval and support (See Map.)
• 1866 Austro-Prussian War results in the incorporation into Prussia of the northern German states into what was called the North German Confederation (1866-1870); Prussia's alliance with Italy, which was struggling to recover Venetia from Austria, provoked the war; southern German states allied themselves with Austria.
• 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, orchestrated by Bismark, resulted in the unification of the remaining German states (Bavaria etc.) into the Second German Empire in 1871, proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on January 18, 1871.
• States Make Nations: Conscription, Education, Nationalist Press, Imperialism

  Maps, Images, Represenations of States and Nations 1848-1914

  

  Declaration of the Germany Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, 28 January 1871, on the eve of the French capitulation, painting by Anton Werner. The artist, an eyewitness, was commissioned to create the official picture of the ceremony. Interestingly, it is not the King/Emperor William at the center of the painting but Bismarck, the architect of the unification. In the well scripted ceremony, the Duke of Bavaria, the ruler who had up to then remained independent of the North German Confederation, was given the task of proclaiming "Long live his majesty, the Emperor William, the victor!" Behind the Emperor are the standard bearers of the other principalities that now form the Empire. At the right of the tribune stand other German princes who salute with raised swords amid the "Hurrahs!"

  • The harsh terms of the Treaty of Frankfurt ending the war required France to cede the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine and to pay an huge indemnity ( about 1 billion dollars) within three years, which it did. These terms created a longing in France for a war of revenge. This became part of the background for World War I.

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