Nationalism and Unification: Italy, Germany and the Breakup of Empires

What is a nation?

In 1789, most Europeans felt loyal to a village, a region, a religion or a ruler. Over the next century, more and more people came to see themselves as members of a nation: a large group sharing a language, history and culture, which (nationalists argued) should have its own state.

Nationalism could work in two directions:

• Uniting: many small states that shared a culture could join into one (Italy, Germany).
• Dividing: peoples inside large multinational empires could break away (Greeks, Serbs and others from the Ottoman Empire; Hungarians demanding self-rule from Austria).

Historians debate whether nations are ancient or constructed in the modern era through schools, newspapers, maps, railways and wars. Much evidence from this century supports the second view: governments worked hard to make citizens feel national.

Italy: the Risorgimento

In 1815, Italy was divided into several states. Austria ruled Lombardy and Venetia directly and influenced others; the Pope ruled the Papal States in the centre; a Bourbon king ruled the south (the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies). Revolts in 1820–1821, 1831 and 1848 all failed.

Three very different men are linked to unification:

• Giuseppe Mazzini, the idealist, founded Young Italy (1831) and preached a democratic, republican Italy created by the people.
• Count Camillo di Cavour, prime minister of the northern kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, was a practical liberal. He modernized Piedmont's economy and army and used diplomacy. He secretly allied with Napoleon III of France, and together they defeated Austria in 1859. Piedmont gained Lombardy, and states in central Italy voted in plebiscites to join.
• Giuseppe Garibaldi, a soldier and nationalist hero, led about a thousand volunteers, the Redshirts, to Sicily in 1860. Joined by local rebels, they conquered Sicily and Naples. Although a republican, Garibaldi handed his conquests to King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont.

The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861. Venetia was added in 1866 and Rome in 1870, when French troops protecting the Pope withdrew during the Franco-Prussian War.

Unification was not the end of the story. Only a small minority of people spoke standard Italian at home. The north and the much poorer south were very different, and the new state fought a long, violent campaign against rural rebellion and banditry in the south in the 1860s. A remark attributed to the politician Massimo d'Azeglio sums it up: having made Italy, the next task was to make Italians.

Germany: blood and iron

In 1815, the German Confederation was a loose group of 39 states led by Austria. Prussia grew stronger through industry and the Zollverein, a customs union that excluded Austria. The liberal attempt at unity in 1848 failed.

In 1862, Otto von Bismarck became minister-president of Prussia. In a famous speech he said that the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and majority votes, as in 1848, but by "iron and blood". He practised Realpolitik and used three short wars:

1. Denmark (1864): Prussia and Austria together took Schleswig and Holstein.
2. Austria (1866): Prussia defeated Austria in seven weeks, pushed it out of German affairs and created the North German Confederation.
3. France (1870–1871): Bismarck edited a diplomatic telegram (the Ems Dispatch) to provoke France into declaring war. The southern German states joined Prussia. After victory, the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on 18 January 1871, with the Prussian king as Kaiser Wilhelm I. Germany took Alsace-Lorraine from France, creating lasting French resentment.

Even more than Italy's, German unification was mainly from above: an authoritarian, military state led it, and parliament had limited power.

Nationalism and the multinational empires

• Ottoman Empire: the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830) won independence with help from Britain, France and Russia, and inspired Romantic writers across Europe. Serbia won self-rule, and at the Congress of Berlin (1878) Serbia, Montenegro and Romania were recognized as independent. The Ottoman response, reform from within, is the subject of a later lesson.
• Austrian Empire: after defeat in 1866, the emperor made the Compromise of 1867, creating the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Hungarians gained self-government, but Czechs, Poles, Croats, Serbs, Romanians and others did not get the same status.
• Russian Empire: governments pursued Russification, forcing Russian language and culture on Poles, Ukrainians, Finns and others. Poles rose up in 1830 and 1863 and were defeated.

Nationalism around the world

Nationalism was not only European. Canada's Confederation in 1867 created a new country for reasons that included defence, railways and trade (you may remember Confederation from earlier grades). The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885. In Japan, Meiji leaders built a strong national identity around the emperor. And Jewish nationalism, Zionism, took organized form when Theodor Herzl published The Jewish State (1896) and called the First Zionist Congress (1897), partly in response to rising antisemitism in Europe.

Nationalism had a dark side too. It could define some people as outsiders, fuel antisemitism and racism, and justify expansion abroad, themes that lead into the age of imperialism.