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The Storm Before the Storm

In 1861, France, Prussia, the Austrian Empire, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire controlled nearly all of modern-day Europe.

Land. Traditions. Language. Religion. Blood.

All these things and others have traditionally defined nations. Nationalism is loyalty to the idea of the state rather than to the community. It is pride in the image of the nation-state and its accomplishments in an international context. It is a powerful belief that people who share common land, traditions, language, religion, and blood belong together in a state of self-rule.

In 1848, the map of Europe looked profoundly different from how it would look later in the 19th century. Most noticeably, the powerful states of Italy and Germany simply did not exist until nationalist movements culminated in the 1860s and 1870s.

The Romantic Movement

In 1860, the Italian national hero Garibaldi charged into Palermo, Sicily, with his legendary 1,000 Red Shirts, conquered the southern part of Italy and unified the country into one nation.

The conservative reaction to the revolutions of 1848 preserved, for the time being, the notion of empire and the artificial borders it created. But the Magyars and the Slavic peoples of the Austrian Empire resented the control imposed by German-speaking Habsburg rulers and resisted Austrian efforts to assimilate them.

The German states of the North German Confederation, which Austria dominated, also sought to preserve their own identities. Germans — especially Prussians — wanted to create a German state as much in opposition to Austria as in the interests of national unity. The Italian Risorgimento of 1859-1870 was fought to reunify disparate Italian provinces subjugated by Austrian and French rulers.

Impressionist painter Claude Monet's attention to fluidity of movement captured the nationalistic fervor that swept France in the latter half of the 19th century, as seen in Rue Montargueil with Flags (1878).

Defeated by both German and Italian forces, France strove to solidify its own identity as a nation as its territory diminished. Most French peasants maintained a local or regional identity rather than the identity of cosmopolitan Paris. France became a modern nation in the 1870s and 1880s. During that period, state campaigns of cultural assimilation succeeded in introducing French culture to peasants and provided incentives for them to adopt these national traditions.

In Russia, serfs had little loyalty for a state that denied them basic civil liberties. By emancipating the serfs in 1861, Tsar Alexander II began the project of creating a modern Russian nation, even as other ethnic groups within Russia's borders struggled to create their own nations.

In all cases, nation building remained problematic, and many questions remained unanswered. What would happen to regions inhabited by more than one ethnic group? Could people of different ethnicities coexist in the same state? How willingly would the existing powers yield power to aspiring nationalities? Creating nations out of empires would be an ongoing process that continued well into the 20th century.

Revolutions of 1848

French
Nationalism

Italian
Reunification