Class X - The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

Class X - The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

NCERT TEXTBOOK QUESTIONS

Q.1. Write a note on 

a. Giuseppe Mazzini - Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian revolutionary, born in Genoa in 1807. He was a member of the secret society of the Carbonari. At the age of 24, he was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria. He founded underground societies named ‘Young Italy’ in Marseilles and ‘Young Europe’ in Berne, whose members were like-minded young men from Poland, France, Italy and the German States.

b. Count Camilo de Cavour - 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. Chief minister Cavour, who led this 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.

c. The Greek War of Independence - The Greek War of Independence mobilised nationalist feelings among the educated class in Europe. Since the 15th century the Ottoman Empire had made Greece its territory. In 1821 the Greeks struggled against this and a nationalist movement began. Exiled Greeks and many West

Europeans who admired ancient Greek culture supported the Greek nationalists. Poets and artists lauded Greece as the cradle of European civilisation and mobilised public opinion to support its struggle against a Muslim empire. After the war, the Treaty of Constantinople was signed in 1832. It recognised Greece as an independent nation.

d. The Frankfurt Parliament - Middle-class professionals, businessmen, wealthy artists and artisans came together to vote for an all-German National Assembly. They met at Frankfurt on 18 May, 1848, and 831 elected representatives walked to take their places in the Frankfurt Parliament convened in the Church

of St. Paul. A Constitution was drafted for a German nation which was to be headed by a monarchy, subject to a Parliament. However, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, rejected the offer to head such a monarchy and opposed the elected assembly. The opposition grew stronger eroding the Parliament. As the middle-class members in the Parliament dominated, they gave no credence to the demands of artisans and workers and so lost their support. The troops were called and the Assembly was also disbanded.

e. The role of women in nationalist struggles - The issue of extending political rights to women was a controversial one within the liberal movement, in which large numbers of women had participated actively over the years. Women had formed their own political associations, founded newspapers and taken part in political meetings and demonstrations. Despite this, they were denied suffrage during the election of the Assembly. When the Frankfurt Parliament convened in the Church of St. Paul, women were admitted only as observers to stand in the visitors’ gallery.

Q.2. What steps did the French revolutionaries take to create a sense of collective identity among the French people?

Ans. The steps taken to create a sense of collective identity amongst French people by the French

revolutionaries included

(i) Ideas of  la patrie  (the fatherland) and  le citoyen (the citizen) emphasising the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution.

(ii) A new French flag, a tricolour.

(iii) A new National Assembly elected by active citizens.

(iv) New hymns, oaths and martyrs commemorated in the name of the nation.

(v) Centralised administrative system.

(vi) Uniform system of weights, measures and abolition of internal customs.

(vii) Discouraging regional dialects and promoting French as a common language of the nation.

Q.3. Who were Marianne and Germania? What was the importance of the way in which they were portrayed?

Ans. Female allegories were invented in the 19th century.

(i) In France, she was christened Marianne, underlining the idea of a people’s nation.

(ii) Marianne’s characteristics resembled that of Liberty and Republic, i.e. the red cap, the tricolour and the cockade.

(iii) Marianne’s statues were erected in public squares to remind the public of the national symbol of unity and to persuade them to identify with it.

(iv) Marianne’s images were marked on coins and stamps.

(v) Germania became the allegory of the German nation.

(vi) In visual representations, Germania wears a crown of oak leaves, as the German oak stands for heroism.

Q.4. Briefly trace the process of German unification.

Ans. In the 1800s, nationalist feelings were strong in the hearts of the middle-class Germans. They united in 1848 to create a nation-state out of the numerous German States. But the monarchy and the military got together to repress them and they gained support from the landowners of Prussia (the Junkers) too. Prussia soon became the leader of German unification movement. Its Chief Minister Otto von Bismarck was the architect of the process with support from Prussian army and Prussian bureaucracy. The unification process was completed after Prussia won wars with Austria, Denmark and France over seven years time. In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed  the  German Emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles.

Q.5. What changes did Napoleon introduce to make the administrative system more efficient

in the territories ruled by him?

Ans. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, he introduced a number of reforms as he had done in France. Return to monarchy had damaged democracy in France but Napoleon had introduced revolutionary principles in administration that had changed it for the better. In 1804 the Civil Code, also called Napoleonic Code, was introduced and it did away with all privileges based on birth, established equality before the law and secured the right to property. Soon the Code spread to all territories under French control. Administration was simplified, feudal system was abolished and serfs were freed in the Dutch Republic, in Switzerland, in Italy and Germany. In the towns, guild restrictions no longer remained. Transport and

communication systems improved. Artisans, peasants, workers and new businessmen enjoyed the new-found freedom. Businessmen and small-scale producers learnt that uniform laws, standardised weights and measures and a common national currency would help in trading goods and capital from one region to another.

In the French territories, there were mixed reactions. In Holland and Switzerland, Brussels, Mainz, Miland and Warsaw, the French armies were welcomed as messengers of liberty. But this feeling soon became negative because the people realised that the new administrative method did not go along with political freedom. Soon people detested increased taxes, censorship and forced conscription into the French armies required to conquer the rest of Europe.

Q.6. Explain what is meant by the 1848 revolution of the liberals. What were the political, social and economic ideas supported by the liberals?

Ans. The term ‘liberalism’ derives from the Latin root liber meaning free. The middle-class believed in the individual’s freedom and that the law must view everyone with equality. On the political front, liberalism denoted government by consent. Liberalism had also symbolised the autocracy’s end and no more clerical privileges. This was followed by a constitution and representative government through Parliament, especially after the French Revolution. 19th century liberals focussed on the inviolability of private property. 

Equality before law did not necessarily stand for universal suffrage. We may recall that in revolutionary France, which marked the first political experiment in liberal democracy, the right to vote and to get elected was granted exclusively to the property-owning men.

The Napoleonic Code went back to limited suffrage and reduced women to the status of a minor, subject to the authority of fathers and husbands. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women and non-propertied men organised opposition movements demanding equal political rights.

In the economic sphere, freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital was liberalism. During the nineteenth century, this was a strong demand of the emerging middle classes.

Such conditions were viewed as obstacles to economic exchange and growth by the new commercial classes, who argued for the creation of a unified economic territory allowing the unhindered movement of goods, people and capital. In 1834, a customs union or Zollverein was formed at the initiative of Prussia and joined by most of the German States. The union abolished tariff barriers and reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two.

Q.7. Choose three examples to show the contribution of culture to the growth of nationalism in Europe.

Ans. The development of nationalism did not come about only through wars and territorial expansion. Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation : art and poetry, stories and music helped to express and shape nationalist feelings. Romanticism was a cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment. Romantic artists and poets generally became strong critics of reason and science in their glorified forms. The Romanticists dwelt more on emotions, intuition and mystical

feelings. They were aiming at creating a sense of shared collective heritage and common cultural part to serve as the basis of a nation.

German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 – 1803), a Romantic, claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people — das volk. He claimed that folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances held the true spirit of the nation (Volksgeist). He encouraged collecting and recording these forms of folk culture as essential to the nation-building process.

The emphasis on vernacular language and the collection of local folklore, as the Grimm brothers (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812) did, was not just to recover an ancient national spirit, but also to carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate. Even though Poland no longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept alive there through music and language.

Language too played an important role in developing nationalist sentiments. After Russian occupation, the Polish language was forced out of schools and the Russian language was imposed everywhere. In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place but 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 a symbol of struggle against Russian dominance.

Q.8. Through a focus on any two countries, explain how nations developed over the nineteenth century.

Ans. The development of the German and Italian nation states in the nineteenth century

Political fragmentation: Till the middle of the nineteenth century, the present-day nations of Germany and Italy were fragmented into separate regions and kingdoms ruled by different princely houses. 

Revolutionary uprisings: Nineteenth-century Europe was characterized by both popular uprisings of the masses and revolutions led by the educated, liberal middle classes. The middle classes belonging to the different German regions came together to form an all-German National Assembly in 1848. However, on facing opposition from the aristocracy and military, and on losing its mass support base, it was forced to disband.

In the Italian region, during the 1830s, revolutionaries like Giuseppe Mazzini sought to establish a unitary Italian Republic. However, the revolutionary uprisings of 1831 and 1848 failed to unite Italy.

Unification with the help of the army: After the failure of the revolutions, the process of German and Italian unification was continued by the aristocracy and the army. Germany was united by the Prussian chief minister Otto von Bismarck  with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy. The German empire was proclaimed in 1871.

The Italian state of Sardinia-Piedmont played a role similar to that played by Prussia. Count Camillo de Cavour (the Chief Minister) led the movement to unite the separate states of nineteenth-century Italy with the help of the army and an alliance with France. The regions annexed by Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Red Shirts joined with the northern regions to form a united Italy. The italian nation was proclaimed in 1861. The papal states joined in 1870.

Q.9.  How was the story of nationalism in Britain unlike the rest of Europe ?

Ans. 

(i) In Britain the formation of the nation-state was not the result of a sudden upheaval or revolution.

(ii) The primary identities of  the people who inhabited the British Isles were ethnic ones - such as English, Welsh, Scot or Irish.

(iii) The Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland resulted in the formation of the 'United Kingdom of Great Britian' meant that England was able to impose its influence on Scotland. Scotland's distinctive culture and political institutions were systematically suppressed.

(iv) 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.

(v) The English helped the Protestants of Ireland to establish their dominance over a largely Catholic country. Catholic revolts against British dominance were suppressed. Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801.

(vi) The symbols of the new Britain - the British flag, the national  anthem, the English language were actively promoted and the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union.

Q.10. Why did nationalist tensions emerge in the Balkans?

Ans.
(i). The Balkan region comprised modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro, and its inhabitants were broadly called Slavs.

(ii). With a large area of Balkan region under Ottoman Empire, the spread of the ideas of romantic nationalism in the Balkans together with the breaking up of the Ottoman Empire made the situation even more serious.

(iiii). Ottoman Empire had not been able to become strong even after reforms and modern methods after an effort of nearly 91 years. Gradually most of the European subject nationalities broke away from the Ottoman Empire’s control to declare themselves

independent.

(iv).  The claim for independence and political rights by the Balkan people was based on nationality. They gave examples of history to prove that they had once been independent but had subsequently been subjugated by foreign powers.

(v). Thus the rebellious nationalities in the Balkans thought of their struggles as attempts to win back their long lost independence.

(vi). Soon various Slavic nationalities were struggling to define their identity and independence making Balkan region one having intense conflict.

(vii). The internal rivalries and jealousies made the Balkan states distrust and fear each other.

(viii). As the Balkans had become site for big power fights, the situation became even more serious. The fights were among the European powers who fought for trade and colonies and for naval and military powers.

(ix). Russia, Germany, England and Austria-Hungary wanted to gain control of the Balkan region causing many wars which culminated in the First World War.