State Sponsored Nationalism and Liberalism (1848-1871)
Overview
State Sponsored Nationalism and Liberalism (1848 – 1871)
In the period after the 1848 Revolutions, liberalism, or constitutionalism, and cultural and ethnic nationalism shaped the formation of national governments in western and central Europe, and, to a lesser extent, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. State-sponsored nationalism and liberalism, as directed by conservative government leaders sought to restrict political, social and economic change. The conservative nature of this process was informed by the experiences and fears of European leaders who wanted to restore the ancien regime. The monarchies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia spearheaded the efforts after Napoleon’s final defeat, with the goal of restoring or protecting the pre-revolutionary dynastic monarchies.
Learning Objective
- Explain the consolidation of national states in Europe during the 19th century.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
ancien regime: Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century (“early modern France”), under the late Valois and Bourbon Dynasties; used to refer to the similar feudal social and political order of the time elsewhere in Europe
Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia: independent kingdom in northern Italy that was the base for Italian unification
Efforts between 1820 and 1848 to create new republics, adopt constitutions in existing monarchies, or unify culturally similar states had enjoyed little success. A number of national leaders learned from these failures, and sought to limit change. Consequently, their efforts at nation-building from the 1848 Revolutions through the unification of Germany were conservative. However, these conservative leaders had to adjust their goals and strategies to the ideological and economic aspirations of the crystallizing middle classes of mid-nineteenth century Europe. Members of these new middle classes sought to eliminate the class- and status-based restrictions which limited their upward mobility, along with the priviledges, among other advantages, enjoyed by national aristocracies and monarchies. Conversely, members of these middle classes opposed populist-based efforts of members of the lower classes to put themselves on the same economic and political footing with the middle and upper classes. Conservative national leaders exploited this middle class predilection to limit democratization, as part of their own national efforts to slow down the pace of such change, a tactic manifest in the gradual political democratization of the United Kingdom through four parliamentary reform acts, passed between 1832 and 1918.
The two best examples of successful state sponsored nationalism and liberalism in nation-building between 1848 to1871 are the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 and the German empire in 1871. Each epitomizes the conservative nature of state-sponsored nationalism and liberalism during this period. In both cases the head of state and the head of government in one of the leading states led the process of unification, controlling the options and defining the terms of each of these two new nations to keep the process a conservative one in which these states led the final product. In Italy the king and prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia forged the Kingdom of Italy by bringing together most of the various states in the Italian peninsula. In Germany the King and prime minister of Prussia orchestrated the unification of the German states outside of Austria. Each effort was conservative and designed to establish the leadership role in the new nation of the leading state. While each of these two efforts was successful in the restraint of change, the founding of these two new European powers, along with earlier more revolutionary efforts from 1820 to 1848 foreshadowed revolutionary efforts which succeeded from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.
Attributions
Images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Title Image - 1860 photo of Giuseppe Mazzini. Attribution: Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Provided by: Wikipedia. Location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giuseppe_Mazzini.jpg. License: CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Boundless World History
"The Congress of Vienna"
Adapted from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-congress-of-vienna/
"France after 1815"
Adapted from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/france-after-1815/
"German Unification"
Adapted from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/german-unification/