Nationalism and State Building
Analyze nationalism, unification, reform, and state-building movements in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
A lesson of World History, in Revolutions and Industrialization, about 10 minutes.
Nationalism and State-Building
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to define nationalism and explain its origins, describe how it reshaped political maps in Europe, analyze its role in decolonization movements, and evaluate the consequences of nationalism in the 19th century.
What Is Nationalism?
Nationalism is the belief that people who share a common language, culture, history, or ethnicity should govern themselves in their own sovereign state. It became the dominant political ideology of the 19th century and fundamentally reshaped the political map of Europe.
Origins: the French Revolution spread the idea that sovereignty belongs to "the nation" (the people), not to monarchs. Napoleon's armies carried this idea across Europe — and provoked nationalist resistance movements in the lands he conquered.
Nationalism in Europe
German Unification:
- Before 1871, "Germany" was a patchwork of 39 states loosely united in the German Confederation
- Otto von Bismarck, Prussian minister-president, pursued unification through "blood and iron" — three calculated wars
- Danish War (1864): Prussia and Austria vs. Denmark
- Austro-Prussian War (1866): Prussia defeated Austria; Prussia now dominant in German affairs
- Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871): Prussia defeated France; German princes proclaimed unified German Empire at Versailles
- German Empire (Second Reich) proclaimed 1871 under Kaiser Wilhelm I; Bismarck as chancellor
Italian Unification (Risorgimento):
- Italy was divided into kingdoms, duchies, and Austrian-controlled territories
- Giuseppe Mazzini: ideological founder of Italian nationalism ("Young Italy")
- Count Camillo di Cavour: Piedmont-Sardinia's prime minister; used diplomacy and wars to unite northern Italy
- Giuseppe Garibaldi: charismatic military leader; "Expedition of the Thousand" (1860) — conquered southern Italy and Sicily
- Kingdom of Italy proclaimed (1861); Rome incorporated (1870)
Austro-Hungarian Empire: a multi-ethnic empire (Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, Croats, Slovenes) held together by the Habsburg dynasty — national minority movements within it were a source of increasing instability.