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described him as ‘the most dangerous enemy of our social order’.

Fig. 7 — Giuseppe Mazzini and the founding of

Young Europe in Berne 1833.Print by Giacomo Mantegazza.13

Nationalism in Europe3 The Age of Revolutions: 1830-1848

As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their power, liberalism

and nationalism came to be increasingly associated with revolution

in many regions of Europe such as the Italian and German states,

the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Ireland and Poland. Theserevolutions were led by the liberal-nationalists belonging to theeducated middle-class elite, among whom were professors, school-teachers, clerks and members of the commercial middle classes.

The first upheaval took place in France in July 1830. The Bourbon

kings who had been restored to power during the conservative

reaction after 1815, were now overthrown by liberal revolutionarieswho installed a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at itshead. ‘When France sneezes,’ Metternich once remarked, ‘the rest ofEurope catches cold.’ The July Revolution sparked an uprising inBrussels which led to Belgium breaking away from the United

Kingdom of the Netherlands.

An event that mobilised nationalist feelings among the educated elite

across Europe was the Greek war of independence. Greece hadbeen part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century. Thegrowth of revolutionary nationalism in Europe sparked off a struggle

for independence amongst the Greeks which began in 1821.

Nationalists in Greece got support from other Greeks living in exileand also from many West Europeans who had sympathies for ancientGreek culture. Poets and artists lauded Greece as the cradle ofEuropean civilisation and mobilised public opinion to support itsstruggle against a Muslim empire. The English poet Lord Byron

organised funds and later went to fight in the war, where he died of

fever in 1824. Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832recognised Greece as an independent nation.

3.1 The Romantic Imagination and National Feeling

The development of nationalism did not come about only throughwars and territorial expansion. Culture played an important role in

creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music

helped express and shape nationalist feelings.

Let us look at Romanticism, a cultural movement which sought to

develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment. Romantic artistsand poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and scienceIndia and the Contemporary World

14Fig. 8 — The Massacre at Chios, Eugene Delacroix, 1824.

The French painter Delacroix was one of the most important French Romanticpainters. This huge painting (4.19m x 3.54m) depicts an incident in which20,000 Greeks were said to have been killed by Turks on the island of Chios. Bydramatising the incident, focusing on the suffering of women and children, andusing vivid colours, Delacroix sought to appeal to the emotions of the spectators,and create sympathy for the Greeks.

and focused instead on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings.

Their effort was to create a sense of a shared collective heritage, acommon cultural past, as the basis of a nation.

Other Romantics such as the German philosopher Johann Gottfried

Herder (1744-1803) claimed that true German culture was to bediscovered among the common people – das volk . It was through

folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of thenation ( volksgeist ) was popularised. So collecting and recording these

forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.

15

Nationalism in EuropeThe Grimm Brothers: Folktales and

Nation-building

Grimms’ Fairy Tales is a familiar name. The brothers

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in theGerman city of Hanau in 1785 and 1786respectively. While both of them studied law,they soon developed an interest in collecting oldfolktales. They spent six years travelling fromvillage to village, talking to people and writingdown fairy tales, which were handed downthrough the generations. These were popularboth among children and adults. In 1812, theypublished their first collection of tales.Subsequently, both the brothers became activein liberal politics, especially the movementfor freedom of the press. In the meantime theyalso published a 33-volume dictionary of theGerman language.

The Grimm brothers also saw French domination

as a threat to German culture, and believed thatthe folktales they had collected were expressionsof a pure and authentic German spirit. Theyconsidered their projects of collecting folktalesand developing the German language as part ofthe wider effort to oppose French dominationand create a German national identity.The emphasis on vernacular language and the collection of local

folklore was not just to recover an ancient national spirit, but also to

carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were

mostly illiterate. This was especially so in the case of Poland, whichhad been partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century by theGreat Powers – Russia, Prussia and Austria. Even though Poland no

longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept

alive through music and language. Karol Kurpinski, for example,celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turningfolk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.

Language too played an important role in developing nationalist

sentiments. After Russian occupation, the Polish language was forcedout of schools and the Russian language was imposed everywhere.In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place which

was ultimately crushed. Following this, many members of the clergy

in Poland began to use language as a weapon of national resistance.Polish was used for Church gatherings and all religious instruction.As a result, a large number of priests and bishops were put in jail or

sent to Siberia by the Russian authorities as punishment for their

refusal to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to be seen as asymbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.

3.2 Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe. The

first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in

population all over Europe. In most countries there were moreseekers of jobs than employment. Population from rural areasmigrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums. Small producers

in towns were often faced with stiff competition from imports of

cheap machine-made goods from England, where industrialisationwas more advanced than on the continent. This was especially so intextile production, which was carried out mainly in homes or small

workshops and was only partly mechanised. In those regions of

Europe where the aristocracy still enjoyed power, peasants struggledunder the burden of feudal dues and obligations. The rise of foodprices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in

town and country.

The year 1848 was one such year. Food shortages and widespread

unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads.Barricades were erected and Louis Philippe was forced to flee. ADiscuss the importance of language and

popular traditions in the creation of national

identity.DiscussBox 1India and the Contemporary World

16National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, granted suffrage to all

adult males above 21, and guaranteed the right to work. National

workshops to provide employment were set up.

Earlier, in 1845, weavers in Silesia had led a revolt against contractors

who supplied them raw material and gave them orders for finished

textiles but drastically reduced their payments. The journalist Wilhelm

Wolff described the events in a Silesian village as follows:

In these villages (with 18,000 inhabitants) cotton weaving is the

most widespread occupation … The misery of the workers is

extreme. The desperate need for jobs has been taken advantageof by the contractors to reduce the prices of the goods they

order …

On 4 June at 2 p.m. a large crowd of weavers emerged from

their homes and marched in pairs up to the mansion of their

contractor demanding higher wages. They were treated with

scorn and threats alternately. Following this, a group of themforced their way into the house, smashed its elegant window-

panes, furniture, porcelain … another group broke into the

storehouse and plundered it of supplies of cloth which theytore to shreds … The contractor fled with his family to a

neighbouring village which, however, refused to shelter such a

person. He returned 24 hours later having requisitioned the army.In the exchange that followed, eleven weavers were shot.

Fig. 9 — Peasants’ uprising, 1848.

Describe the cause of the Silesian weavers’

uprising. Comment on the viewpoint of the

journalist.Discuss

Imagine you are a weaver who saw the eventsas they unfolded. Write a report on what you saw.Activity17

Nationalism in Europe3.3 1848: The Revolution of the Liberals

Parallel to the revolts of the poor, unemployed and starving peasants

and workers in many European countries in the year 1848, a revolutionled by the educated middle classes was under way. Events of February

1848 in France had brought about the abdication of the monarch

and a republic based on universal male suffrage had been proclaimed.In other parts of Europe where independent nation-states did not

yet exist – such as Germany, Italy, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian

Empire – men and women of the liberal middle classes combinedtheir demands for constitutionalism with national unification. They

took advantage of the growing popular unrest to push their

demands for the creation of a nation-state on parliamentaryprinciples – a constitution, freedom of the press and freedom

of association.

In the German regions a large number of political associations whose

members were middle-class professionals, businessmen and

prosperous artisans came together in the city of Frankfurt and decided