The Age of Revolutions & Unification of Germany and Italy

NCERT India and the Contemporary World-II | The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

The Age of Revolutions 1830–1848 — How Did Liberal Nationalism Spread Across Europe?

As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their authority after the Vienna Congress, liberalism and nationalism became increasingly associated with revolution across Europe. These upheavals affected the Italian and German states, the Ottoman Empire's provinces, Ireland, and Poland, and were typically led by educated middle-class liberals such as professors, teachers, clerks, and businessmen.

The July Revolution of 1830 in France

The first major upheaval occurred in France in July 1830. The Bourbon kings, restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815, were overthrown by liberal revolutionaries who established a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe. As Metternich famously observed, when France caught a political cold, the rest of Europe fell ill. The July Revolution sparked an uprising in Brussels that resulted in Belgium breaking away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The Greek War of Independence

An event that united nationalist sentiment across educated Europe was the Greek war of independence^?. Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century. The growth of revolutionary nationalism sparked a struggle for independence beginning in 1821. Greek nationalists received support from the Greek diaspora and from many Western Europeans who admired ancient Greek civilisation. Poets and artists rallied public opinion in favour of Greece's struggle against Ottoman rule. The English poet Lord Byron even organised funding and travelled to fight in the war, where he died of fever in 1824. The Treaty of Constantinople (1832) formally recognised Greece as an independent nation.

3.1 The Romantic Imagination and National Feeling

Nationalism did not develop solely through wars and territorial expansion. Culture played a vital role in creating the idea of the nation. Art, poetry, stories, and music all helped express and shape nationalist feelings.

Romanticism^? was a cultural movement that developed a distinct form of nationalist sentiment. Romantic artists and poets critiqued the glorification of reason and science, focusing instead on emotions, intuition, and mystical feelings. They worked to create a sense of shared collective heritage and a common cultural past as the foundation for national identity.

The emphasis on volksgeist^? (folk spirit) led thinkers like the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder to argue that true national culture was to be found among the common people (das volk) through their folk songs, poetry, and dances. Collecting and recording these cultural forms became essential to nation-building.

Language as a Weapon of Resistance: Poland

The use of vernacular language and folk traditions served not just to recover an ancient national spirit but also to carry the nationalist message to the largely illiterate masses. This was particularly significant in Poland, which had been partitioned among Russia, Prussia, and Austria at the end of the eighteenth century.

After Russian occupation, the Polish language was forced out of schools and replaced with Russian. Following a failed armed rebellion against Russian rule in 1831, many Polish clergy began using language as a tool of national resistance. Polish was used in church gatherings and religious instruction. Numerous priests and bishops were imprisoned or sent to Siberia for refusing to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to symbolise resistance against Russian domination.

3.2 Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

The 1830s brought severe economic hardship to Europe. An enormous increase in population meant more job seekers than available employment. Rural populations migrated to overcrowded urban slums. Small-scale producers faced fierce competition from cheap machine-made goods imported from England. In regions where the aristocracy still held power, peasants struggled under feudal dues. Rising food prices and poor harvests led to widespread pauperism.

The year 1848 was particularly devastating. Food shortages and mass unemployment drove the people of Paris into the streets. Barricades went up, and Louis Philippe was forced to flee. A National Assembly proclaimed a republic, granted suffrage to all adult males over 21, and guaranteed the right to work by establishing national workshops.

3.3 1848: The Revolution of the Liberals

Alongside the revolts of the poor and hungry, a parallel revolution led by the educated middle classes unfolded in 1848. In countries like Germany, Italy, Poland, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, liberal middle-class men and women combined demands for constitutionalism with national unification. They sought nation-states built on parliamentary principles: a constitution, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.

In the German regions, middle-class professionals, businessmen, and artisans gathered in Frankfurt and voted for an all-German National Assembly. On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives marched to the Frankfurt parliament in the Church of St Paul. They drafted a constitution for a German nation headed by a monarchy subject to parliament. However, when they offered the crown to Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, he rejected it and joined other monarchs in opposing the assembly. The parliament lost its social base when middle-class deputies resisted workers' demands, and troops eventually forced the assembly to disband.

Though conservative forces suppressed liberal movements in 1848, they could not fully restore the old order. Monarchs gradually recognised that granting some concessions was necessary. In the years after 1848, serfdom and bonded labour were abolished in both the Habsburg domains and Russia. The Habsburg rulers granted Hungary greater autonomy in 1867.

How Were Germany and Italy Unified? — Bismarck, Garibaldi and Nation-Building

4.1 Germany — Can the Army Be the Architect of a Nation?

After 1848, nationalism in Europe shifted away from its association with democracy and revolution. Conservative forces increasingly mobilised nationalist sentiments for state power and political dominance.

The liberal attempt at German unification through the Frankfurt parliament had failed, crushed by the combined forces of the monarchy, military, and the powerful Prussian landowners known as Junkers^?. Leadership of the unification movement now passed to Prussia under its chief minister Otto von Bismarck^?, who orchestrated unification through military power and bureaucratic efficiency.

Three wars over seven years completed the process:

In January 1871, the Prussian king William I was proclaimed German Emperor at a ceremony held in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The new nation-state placed strong emphasis on modernising currency, banking, and the legal and judicial systems, with Prussian practices often becoming the model for all of Germany.

4.2 Italy Unified

Like Germany, Italy had a long history of political fragmentation. Italians were scattered across several dynastic states and the multi-national Habsburg Empire. During the mid-nineteenth century, Italy was divided into seven states: only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house. The north was under Austrian Habsburgs, the centre was governed by the Pope, and the southern regions were dominated by the Spanish Bourbon kings. Even the Italian language had no single standard form, existing in many regional variations.

During the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini had attempted to build a programme for a united Italian republic through his secret society Young Italy. When revolutionary uprisings failed in both 1831 and 1848, the task of unification fell to Sardinia-Piedmont under King Victor Emmanuel II.

Chief Minister Count Cavour^? led the diplomatic effort. Through a strategic alliance with France, Sardinia-Piedmont defeated Austrian forces in 1859. Meanwhile, Giuseppe Garibaldi^? led an army of armed volunteers into South Italy, where they won the support of local peasants and drove out the Spanish rulers from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

In 1861, Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy. However, a large portion of the Italian population, with very high illiteracy rates, remained unaware of liberal-nationalist ideology. The Papal States were finally incorporated in 1870 when France withdrew its garrison during the Franco-Prussian War.

4.3 The Strange Case of Britain

Unlike Germany and Italy, Britain's formation as a nation-state was not the result of a sudden revolution but a long, gradual process. Before the eighteenth century, the primary identities in the British Isles were ethnic: English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish, each with distinct cultural and political traditions.

As England grew in wealth and power, it extended its influence over the other nations of the islands. The English parliament, which had seized power from the monarchy in 1688, became the instrument through which a nation-state with England at its centre was forged.

• Act of Union (1707): United England and Scotland into the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain,' effectively imposing English influence on Scotland. Scottish culture and political institutions were systematically suppressed; Highland Scots were forbidden from speaking Gaelic or wearing their national dress.
• Ireland (1801): After a failed revolt by Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen in 1798, Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom. English-backed Protestants established dominance over the largely Catholic country.

A new 'British nation' was forged through the promotion of a dominant English culture. The symbols of British identity — the Union Jack, the national anthem, and the English language — were actively propagated, while the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in the union.