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Nationalist Revolutions Sweep the West, 1789 – 1900
Chapter 24, Pages 678 to 711
World History: Patterns of Interaction
McDougal-Littell 2007
During the ten years of the French Revolution, thousands of innocent civilians –
including women and children – were murdered, and no freedoms were gained,
because when it ended in 1799, France was again under absolute rule, first by
Napoleon, then by the restored Bourbon monarchy. Napoleon used his time in
power to attack almost every other nation in Europe; when he conquered Spain in
1808, Spanish colonies around the world fell to rebels. Spain was using all its
energy to expel Napoleon, and could not defend its colonies. When Napoleon was
defeated and exiled in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a diplomatic
framework to ensure peace and stability: the world was tired after twenty-five
years of senseless bloodshed. There would be no major wars for the next hundred
years; there were some minor ones.
Although the Congress of Vienna, led by Austria’s chief diplomat, a man named
Metternich, succeeded in creating peace, there were other problems. While there
were no wars between countries, there were political tensions inside countries,
leading to attempted revolutions. Liberals wanted to ensure that the interests of the
middle-class, the landowners, and the educated classes were represented in
national parliaments and congresses. Radicals wanted to destroy society, including
families and religions, and create a socialist communist utopia. Conservatives
wanted to ensure that valuable lessons from past tradition were not lost.
A form of political thought emerged: nationalism. A nation is a group of people
united by their language, culture, traditions, or ethnicity. A state is a territory united
under the rule of a single government. A “nation-state” is the mixture of the two.
The nationalists believed that the creation and strength of a nation-state was the
ultimate value. Nationalists are loyal, not to the ruler, but to the nation itself. A
moderate type of nationalism is good, because it encourages people to appreciate
and support their nation’s achievements and heritage. An extreme type of
nationalism, however, leads people to value the nation more than their family, more
than morality, or more than God – this extreme nationalism leads to war, and to
inhumane treatment of anyone who is thought to be disloyal.
As liberals, conservatives, radicals, and nationalists wrestled for control, revolts
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spread across Europe. Some were successful, some weren’t. In 1830, Belgium,
which had been part of the Netherlands, rebelled and gained its independence. In
Italy, an uprising demanded the unification of many small territories into one
united Italian nation-state; they did not succeed. In Poland, which had been split
into three sections and made part of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, the Poles
protested, demanding to get their own nation-state back again; they were not
successful. In 1848, almost every country in Europe saw mass protests, but no
change in government resulted. Between 1815 and 1849, however, the nationalists,
who had originally sided with the liberals, began to side with the conservatives.
France was a special case. After Napoleon was removed in 1815, France had
violent changes of government in 1830, 1848, 1852, and 1870. This pattern
weakened France politically.
Russia faced no revolts, but had other problems: it had not modernized as much as
the European nations had. It attempted to liberate the Crimean Peninsula from the
Islamic armies of the Ottoman Empire. When this attempt, called ‘The Crimean
War’ and lasting from 1853 to 1856, failed, Czar Alexander II of Russia decided to
make Russia a modern industrial nation, and to free the serfs. He died in 1881, and
his successor, Alexander III, continued to modernize Russian industry, but did not
free the serfs.
Nationalism continued to shape the world. The Austrian Empire eventually
dissolved because the various nations within it – the Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks,
Germans, and Poles – wanted their own nation-states. The Muslims saw their
Ottoman Empire dissolve when the Greeks, who had been invaded and occupied
by imperial Islamic armies, felt nationalistic passions and wanted their own free
and independent nation-state. After military victories in 1826 and 1827, helped by
other European nations, the Greeks signed a treaty and gained independence in
1830. Nationalism dissolved the Austrian and Ottoman empires.
Nationalism was a unifying force in Italy and Germany. A few small kingdoms and
republics – Sardinia, Sicily, Tuscany, Lombardy, and others – united between 1852
and 1870. In Germany, under the leadership of King Wilhelm I and his chancellor
Bismarck, the territories of Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Alsace, Lorraine, Hesse,
Hanover, Westphalia, and others united to form the modern nation-state of
Germany in 1871. Two brief wars – one was seven weeks long, the other six
months – demonstrated that no major military conflicts would happen in Europe.
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