NATIONALISM IN EUROPE

Frédéric Sorrieu Painting

 In 1848, Frédéric Sorrieu, a French artist, prepared a series of four prints visualising his dream of a world made up of
‘democratic and social Republics’, as he called them.
 1st print shows ppls of America and Europe marching a long train and paying homage to statue of liberty
 S.O.L hold torch of enlightenment in one hand and charter of rights of man in other
 On earth lies foreground of shattered remains of absolutist institutions
 In this utopian vision,ppl of diff countries are portrayed by their flags
 In pic,usa and Switzerland lead procession and were already nation states.france,Germany, Austria, the Kingdom of the
Two Sicilies, Lombardy, Poland, England, Ireland, Hungary and Russia followed.
 From the heavens above, Christ, saints and angels gaze upon the scene. They have been used by the artist to symbolise
fraternity among the nations of the world.
 NATION STATE: a nation-state was one in which the majority of its citizens, and not only its rulers, came to develop a
sense of common identity and shared history or descent.
 MODERN STATE:centralised power ,sovereign control, defined territory
 Absolutist – Literally, a government or system of rule that has no restraints on the power exercised. In history, the term
refers to a form of monarchical government that was centralised, militarised and repressive
 Utopian – A vision of a society that is so ideal that it is unlikely to actually exist
 Plebiscite – A direct vote by which all the people of a region are asked to accept or reject a proposal

UNIT-1:THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND IDEA OF NATION

FRENCH REVN=1ST CLEAR NATIONALIST EXPRESSION.FRANCE=FULL FLEDGED TERRITORIAL STATE UNDER MONARCHY IN 1789.

WAYS ADOPTED BY FRENCH REVOLUTIONARIES TO CREATE COLLECTIVE IDENTITY AMONG FRENCH PPL

 La patrie and le citoyen emphasied notion of united community enjoying = rights under constitution
 New French flag tricolor replaced former royal standard
 New hymns composed,oaths taken and martyrs commemorated all in the name of the nation
 Estates general elected by active citizen body and renamed national assembly
 Regional dialects discouraged,French as spoken in paris became comm lang.
 Centralised administrative system put in place issuing = rights/laws for all
 Internal custom duties and dues abolished,uniform weights and measures system introduces

Revolutionaries declared it was mission of french nation to free Europeans from despotism i.e to help other European ppl
become nation states.

JACOBIN CLUBS

 When the news of the events in France reached the different cities of Europe, students and other members of educated
middle classes began setting up Jacobin clubs.
 Their activities and campaigns prepared the way for the French armies which moved into Holland, Belgium, Switzerland
and much of Italy in the 1790s.
 With the outbreak of the revolutionary wars, the French armies began to carry the idea of nationalism abroad.

NAPOLEANIC CODE/CIVIL CODE OF 1804

 Priveledges based on birth removed , equality before law , right to property secured
 Transported to regions under French control
 In the Dutch Republic, in Switzerland, in Italy and Germany, Napoleon simplified administrative divisions, abolished the
feudal system and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues.
 Guild restrictions removed in towns
 Transport and comm systems improved
 Peasants, artisans, workers and new businessmen enjoyed a new-found freedom.
 Businessmen and small-scale producers of goods, in particular, began to realise that uniform laws, standardised weights
and measures, and a common national currency would facilitate the movement and exchange of goods and capital from
one region to another.

DISADVANTAGES OF NAPOLEANIC CODE

  Initially, in many places such as Holland and Switzerland, as well as in certain cities like Brussels, Mainz, Milan and
Warsaw, the French armies were welcomed as harbingers of liberty.
 But the initial enthusiasm soon turned to hostility, as it became clear that the new administrative arrangements did not
go hand in hand with political freedom.
 Increased taxation, censorship, forced conscription into the French armies required to conquer the rest of Europe, all
seemed to outweigh the advantages of the administrative changes.

UNIT-2:THE MAKING OF NATIONALISM IN EUROPE

 HABSBURG EMPIRE
o Patchwork of many diff regions and ppl
o Alpine regions- tyrol , Austria , sudentenland- aristocracy German speaking
o Hungary=half popn spoke Magyar and other half spoke variety of dialects
o Galicia=polish speaking aristocracy
o Besides these 3 dominant grps there lived a mass of subject peasnt ppls-bohemians and Slovaks in
north ,Slovenes in Carniola,croats in south and roumans to east in transtylvania
o Differences didn’t promote common identity and common allegiance to emperor was only common tie.
 LANDED ARISTOCRACY
o Common way of life cutting through regional divisions
o Estates in countryside and also townhouses
o French for aristocracy and in high society
o Family ties through marriage
o Minority in popn but dominant grp.in west Europe,land cultivated by tenants and small owners.in east and
central,vast landholdings were cultivated by serfs
 NEW MIDDLE CLASS
o Western and central Europe -industrialisation=growth of towns=gronth of comm classes whose existence
depended on production for market.
o Industrialisation began in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, but in France and parts of the
German states it occurred only during the nineteenth century.
o In its wake, new social groups came into being: a working-class population, and middle classes made up of
industrialists, businessmen, professionals.
o In Central and Eastern Europe these groups were smaller in number till late nineteenth century. It was among
the educated, liberal middle classes that ideas of national unity following the abolition of aristocratic privileges
gained popularity.
 MEANING OF LIBERAL NATIONALISM AMONG PPL
o LIBERALISM-FROM LATIN ROOT LIBER MEANING FREE
o POLITICAL SPHERE:govt by consent
o NEW MIDDLE CLASS:freedom of individual and equality of all before law
o AFTER FRENCH REVOLUTION: end of autocracy & clerical priveledges, a constitution and representative
government through parliament. Nineteenth-century liberals also stressed the inviolability of private property.
o equality before the law did not necessarily stand for universal suffrage. in revolutionary France, which marked
the first political experiment in liberal democracy, the right to vote and to get elected was granted exclusively
to property-owning men.
o Men without property and all women were excluded from political rights. Only for a brief period under the
Jacobins did all adult males enjoy suffrage.
o However, 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.
o Throughout the nineteenth and early 20th centuries women and non-propertied men organised opposition
movements demanding equal political rights.
o ECONOMIC SPHERE: freedom of markets and the abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of
goods and capital.
o GERMAN STATES WERE DIVIDED INTO 39 PRINCIPALITIES EACH HAVING THEIR OWN CURRENCY AND SYSTEM
OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES,making it cumbersome to transport goods and capital.
o Zollverein
 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 30+ to 2. The creation of a
network of railways further stimulated mobility, harnessing economic interests to national unification.
CONSERVATISM

 Napolean lost in 1815 battle of waterloo.

 European governments were driven by a spirit of conservatism.
 Conservatives believed that established, traditional institutions of state and society – like the monarchy, the Church,
social hierarchies, property and the family should be preserved.
 Most conservatives, however, did not propose a return to the society of pre-revolutionary days.
 Rather, they realised, from the changes initiated by Napoleon, that modernisation could in fact strengthen traditional
institutions like the monarchy.
 It could make state power more effective and strong. A modern army, an efficient bureaucracy, a dynamic economy, the
abolition of feudalism and serfdom could strengthen the autocratic monarchies of Europe.
 Conservative regimes set up in 1815 were autocratic.
 They did not tolerate criticism and dissent, and sought to curb activities that questioned the legitimacy of autocratic
governments.
 Most of them imposed censorship laws to control what was said in newspapers, books, plays and songs and reflected
the ideas of liberty and freedom associated with the French Revolution.
 The memory of the French Revolution nonetheless continued to inspire liberals.
 One of the major issues taken up by the liberal-nationalists, who criticised the new conservative order, was freedom of
the press.

TREATY OF VIENNA

 1815-representatives of Britain, Russia, Prussia & Austria met at Vienna to draw up treaty of Vienna
 The main objective of treaty of Vienna was to establish a new conservative order in Europe and bring back all the
monarchs overthrown by napolean
 The congress was headed by Austrian chancellor duke Metternich
 Terms
o Bourbon dynasty brought back in France
o Series of states set up to borders of France to prevent further expansion-k of netherlands to north and genoa
was added to piedmont to the south
o Prussia given imp new territories on western frontiers, while Austria given control of northern Italy.
o German confederation of 39 states that had been set up by Napoleon was left untouched.
o In east, Russia was given part of Poland while Prussia was given a portion of Saxony.

The Revolutionaries

 During the years following 1815, the fear of repression drove many liberal-nationalists underground. Secret societies
sprang up in many European states to train revolutionaries and spread their ideas.
 To be revolutionary at this time meant a commitment to oppose monarchical forms that had been established after the
Vienna Congress, and to fight for liberty and freedom.
 Most of these revolutionaries also saw the creation of nation-states as a necessary part of this struggle for freedom.
 Giuseppe Mazzini
o One such individual was the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. Born in Genoa in 1805, he became a
member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
o As a young man of 24, he was sent into exile in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria. He subsequently
founded two more underground societies, first, Young Italy in Marseilles, and then, Young Europe in Berne,
whose members were like-minded young men from Poland, France, Italy and the German states.
o Mazzini believed that God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind. So Italy could not continue
to be a patchwork of small states and kingdoms. It had to be forged into a single unified republic within a wider
alliance of nations. This unification alone could be the basis of Italian liberty.
o Following his model, secret societies were set up in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland. Mazzini’s
relentless opposition to monarchy and his vision of democratic republics frightened the conservatives.
o Metternich described him as ‘the most dangerous enemy of our social order’.
UNIT-3:THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS(1830-1848)
 JULY 1830 REVOLUTION OF FRANCE
o The first upheaval took place in France in July 1830.
o The Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815, were now
overthrown by liberal revolutionaries who installed a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head.
o ‘When France sneezes,’ Metternich once remarked, ‘the rest of Europe catches cold.’
o The July Revolution sparked an uprising in Brussels which led to Belgium breaking away from the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands.
 GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
o Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the 15TH century.
o The growth of revolutionary nationalism in Europe sparked off a struggle for independence amongst the
Greeks which began in 1821.
o Nationalists in Greece got support from other Greeks living in exile and also from many West Europeans who
had sympathies for ancient Greek culture.
o Poets and artists lauded Greece as the cradle of European civilisation and mobilised public opinion to support
its struggle against a Muslim empire.
o The English poet Lord Byron organised funds and later went to fight in the war, where he died of fever in 1824.
Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation.
 ROMANTICISM
o Romanticism was a cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment.
o Romantic artists and poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and science
o They focused instead on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings.
o Their effort was to create a sense of a shared collective heritage, a common cultural past, as the basis of a
nation.
o Other Romantics such as the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) claimed that true
German culture was to be discovered among the common people – das volk.
o It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of the nation (volksgeist) was
popularised.
o So collecting and recording these forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.
o The emphasis on vernacular language and the collection of local folklore was not just to recover an ancient
national spirit, but also to carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate.
o CASE OF POLAND
 had been partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century by the Great Powers – Russia, Prussia and
Austria.
 Even though Poland no longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept alive
through music and language.
 Karol Kurpinski, for example, celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning
folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.
 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 which 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 the struggle against Russian dominance.
 Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt
o 1830’S : years of great economic hardship in Europe
 First half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in population all over Europe.
 More job seekers than jobs in many countries
 Population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums.
 Small producers in towns were often faced with stiff competition from imports of cheap machine-
made goods from England, where industrialisation was more advanced than on the continent.
 This was especially so in textile production, which was carried out mainly in homes or small workshops
and was only partly mechanised.
  In those regions of Europe where the aristocracy still enjoyed power, peasants struggled under the
burden of feudal dues and obligations.
 The rise of food prices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in town and country.
o 1848-
 Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads.
 Barricades were erected and Louis Philippe was forced to flee.
 A National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, granted suffrage to all adult males above 21, and
guaranteed the right to work.
 National workshops to provide employment were set up.
o Silesia Revolt of 1845
 The condition of workers in town was extreme.
 In 1845,weavers of Silesia village led a revolt against contractors
 It was because the contractors supplied raw material to weavers and gave them orders but reduced
their payments.
 On 4th June: a large crowd of weavers revolted and demanded from the contractors higher
wages.However,they treated badly threatened by contractors
o 1848: The Revolution of the Liberals
 Parallel to the revolts of the poor, unemployed and starving peasants and workers in many European
countries in the year 1848, a revolution led by the educated middle classes was under way.
 Events of February 1848 in France had brought about the abdication of the monarch and a republic
based on universal male suffrage had been proclaimed.
 In other parts of Europe where independent nation-states did not yet exist – such as Germany, Italy,
Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire – men and women of the liberal middle classes combined their
demands for constitutionalism with national unification.
 They took advantage of the growing popular unrest to push their demands for the creation of a
nation-state on parliamentary principles – a constitution, freedom of the press and freedom of
association.
o May Revolution of 1848
 In the German regions a large number of political associations whose members were middle-class
professionals, businessmen and prosperous artisans came together in the city of Frankfurt and
decided to vote for an all-German National Assembly.
 On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives marched in a festive procession to take their places in
the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St Paul.
 They drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament.
 When the deputies offered the crown on these terms to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he
rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly.
 While the opposition of the aristocracy and military became stronger, the social basis of parliament
eroded.
 The parliament was dominated by the middle classes who resisted the demands of workers and
artisans and consequently lost their support.
 In the end troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband.
o 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.
o Women had formed their own political associations, founded newspapers and taken part in political meetings
and demonstrations.
o Despite this they were denied suffrage rights during the election of the Assembly.
o When the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St Paul, women were admitted only as observers to
stand in the visitors’ gallery.
o Issue of political rights for women
 Though conservative forces were able to suppress liberal movements in 1848, they could not restore
the old order.
 Monarchs were beginning to realise that the cycles of revolution and repression could only be ended
by granting concessions to the liberal-nationalist revolutionaries.
 Hence, in the years after 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to
introduce the changes that had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815.
 Thus serfdom and bonded labour were abolished both in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia.
 The Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867.
.UNIT-4:UNIFICATION OF ITALY,GERMANY & ENGLAND

UNIFICATION OF GERMANY

 Nationalist feelings were widespread among middle-class Germans, who in 1848 tried to unite the different regions of
the German confederation into a nation-state governed by an elected parliament.
 This liberal initiative to nation-building was, however, repressed by the combined forces of the monarchy and the
military, supported by the large landowners (called Junkers) of Prussia.
 From then on, Prussia took on the leadership of the movement for national unification.
 Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the architect of this process carried out with the help of the Prussian army and
bureaucracy.
 Three wars over seven years – with Austria, Denmark and France – ended in Prussian victory and completed the process
of unification.
 In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed German Emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles. On the
bitterly cold morning of 18 January 1871, an assembly comprising the princes of the German states, representatives of
the army, important Prussian ministers including the chief minister Otto von Bismarck gathered in the unheated Hall of
Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles to proclaim the new German Empire headed by Kaiser William I of Prussia.
 The nation-building process in Germany had demonstrated the dominance of Prussian state power.
 The new state placed a strong emphasis on modernising the currency, banking, legal and judicial systems in Germany.
 Prussian measures and practices often became a model for the rest of Germany.

UNIFICATION OF ITALY

 Political Fragmentation of Italy

o During the mid-19th century,Italy was divided into 7 states,out of which only one Sardinia-Piedmont, was ruled
by an Italian princely house.
o The north was under Austrian Habsburgs, the centre was ruled by the Pope and the southern regions were
under the domination of the Bourbon kings of Spain.
o Even the Italian language had not acquired one common form and still had many regional and local variations.
 Role of Mazzini
o During the 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini had sought to put together a coherent programme for a unitary Italian
Republic.
o He had also formed a secret society called Young Italy for the dissemination of his goals.
o 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.
o In the eyes of the ruling elites of this region, a unified Italy offered them the possibility of economic
development and political dominance
 Role of Cavour
o Chief Minister Cavour who led the movement to unify the regions of Italy was neither a revolutionary nor a
democrat.
o Like many other wealthy and educated members of the Italian elite, he spoke French much better than he did
Italian.
o Through a tactful diplomatic alliance with France engineered by Cavour, Sardinia-Piedmont succeeded in
defeating the Austrian forces in 1859.
 Role of Garibaldi
o Apart from regular troops, a large number of armed volunteers under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi
joined the fray.
o In 1860, they marched into South Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and succeeded in winning the
support of the local peasants in order to drive out the Spanish rulers.
o In 1861 Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy.
 La Talia
o However, much of the Italian population, among whom rates of illiteracy were very high, remained blissfully
unaware of liberal nationalist ideology.
o The peasant masses who had supported Garibaldi in southern Italy had never heard of Italia, and believed that
‘La Talia’ was Victor Emmanuel’s wife!
o La Talia was allegory of Italy
UNIFICATION OF BRITAIN

 In Britain the formation of the nation-state was not the result of a sudden upheaval or revolution.
 It was the result of a long-drawn-out process. There was no British nation prior to the eighteenth century.
 The primary identities of the people who inhabited the British Isles were ethnic ones – such as English, Welsh, Scot or
Irish. All of these ethnic groups had their own cultural and political traditions.
 But as the English nation steadily grew in wealth, importance and power, it was able to extend its influence over the
other nations of the islands. The English parliament, which had seized power from the monarchy in 1688 at the end of a
protracted conflict, was the instrument through which a nation-state, with England at its centre, came to be forged.
 Incorporation of Scotland:
o The Act of Union (1707) between England and Scotland that resulted in the formation of the ‘United Kingdom
of Great Britain’ meant, in effect, that England was able to impose its influence on Scotland.
o The British parliament was henceforth dominated by its English members.
o The growth of a British identity meant that Scotland’s distinctive culture and political institutions were
systematically suppressed.
o The Catholic clans that inhabited the Scottish Highlands suffered terrible repression whenever they attempted
to assert their independence.
o 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.
 Incorporation of Ireland:
o Ireland was a country deeply divided between Catholics and Protestants. The English helped the Protestants of
Ireland to establish their dominance over a largely Catholic country.
o Catholic revolts against British dominance were suppressed. After a failed revolt led by Wolfe Tone and his
United Irishmen (1798), Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801.
 A new ‘British nation’ was forged through the propagation of a dominant English culture.
 The symbols of the new Britain – the British flag (Union Jack), the national anthem (God Save Our Noble King), the
English language – were actively promoted and the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union.

UNIT-5:ALLEGORY
 Artists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found a way out by personifying a nation. In other words they
represented a country as if it were a person.
 Nations were then portrayed as female figures.
 The female form that was chosen to personify the nation did not stand for any particular woman in real life; rather it
sought to give the abstract idea of the nation a concrete form.
 That is, the female figure became an allegory of the nation.
 During the French Revolution artists used the female allegory to portray ideas such as Liberty, Justice and the Republic.
These ideals were represented through specific objects or symbols.
 the attributes of Liberty are the red cap, or the broken chain, while Justice is generally a blindfolded woman carrying a
pair of weighing scales.
 Similar female allegories were invented by artists in the nineteenth century to represent the nation.
 In France she was christened Marianne, a popular Christian name, which underlined the idea of a people’s nation. Her
characteristics were drawn from those of Liberty and the Republic – the red cap, the tricolour, the cockade.
 Statues of Marianne were erected in public squares to remind the public of the national symbol of unity and to
persuade them to identify with it.
 Marianne images were marked on coins and stamps.
 Similarly, Germania became the allegory of the German nation. In visual representations, Germania wears a crown of
oak leaves, as the German oak stands for heroism.
 Allegory – When an abstract idea (for instance, greed, envy, freedom, liberty) is expressed through a person or a thing.
An allegorical story has two meanings, one literal and one symbolic
 Ethnic – Relates to a common racial, tribal, or cultural origin or background that a community identifies with or claims
 Ideology – System of ideas reflecting a particular social and political vision
 Feminist – Awareness of women’s rights and interests based on the belief of the social, economic and political equality
of the genders
 Conservatism – A political philosophy that stressed the importance of tradition, established institutions and customs,
and preferred gradual development to quick change
UNIT-6:NATIONALISM AND IMPERIALISM
 By the last quarter of the nineteenth century nationalism no longer retained its idealistic liberal-democratic sentiment
of the first half of the century, but became a narrow creed with limited ends.
 During this period nationalist groups became increasingly intolerant of each other and ever ready to go to war.
 The major European powers, in turn, manipulated the nationalist aspirations of the subject peoples in Europe to further
their own imperialist aims.
 BALKANS
 The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871 was the area called the Balkans. The Balkans was a
region of geographical and ethnic variation comprising modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, Macedonia,
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro whose inhabitants were broadly known as the Slavs.
 A large part of the Balkans was under the control of the Ottoman Empire.
 The spread of the ideas of romantic nationalism in the Balkans together with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire
made this region very explosive.
 All through the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire had sought to strengthen itself through modernisation and
internal reforms but with very little success.
 One by one, its European subject nationalities broke away from its control and declared independence. The Balkan
peoples based their claims for independence or political rights on nationality and used history to prove that they had
once been independent but had subsequently been subjugated by foreign powers.
 Hence the rebellious nationalities in the Balkans thought of their struggles as attempts to win back their long-lost
independence.
 As the different Slavic nationalities struggled to define their identity and independence, the Balkan area became an area
of intense conflict.
 The Balkan states were fiercely jealous of each other and each hoped to gain more territory at the expense of the
others.
 Matters were further complicated because the Balkans also became the scene of big power rivalry.
 During this period, there was intense rivalry among the European powers over trade and colonies as well as naval and
military might.
 These rivalries were very evident in the way the Balkan problem unfolded. Each power – Russia, Germany, England,
Austro-Hungary – was keen on countering the hold of other powers over the Balkans, and extending its own control
over the area.
 This led to a series of wars in the region and finally the First World War
 Nationalism, aligned with imperialism, led Europe to disaster in 1914.
 But meanwhile, many countries in the world which had been colonised by the European powers in the nineteenth
century began to oppose imperial domination.
 The anti-imperial movements that developed everywhere were nationalist, in the sense that they all struggled to form
independent nation-states, and were inspired by a sense of collective national unity, forged in confrontation with
imperialism.
 European ideas of nationalism were nowhere replicated, for people everywhere developed their own specific variety of
nationalism.
 But the idea that societies should be organised into ‘nation-states’ came to be accepted as natural and universal.