The Rise of Nationalism in Europe
Liberals, conservatives and revolutionaries
Compare liberal and conservative ideas in nineteenth-century Europe.
Europe before nation-states. In the mid-18th century, today's Germany, Italy and Switzerland were split into kingdoms, duchies and cantons. Eastern and Central Europe were ruled by autocratic monarchs over many different peoples. The Habsburg Empire (Austria-Hungary) was a patchwork: German-speaking nobles in Bohemia, Italian-speaking Lombardy and Venetia, Magyar-speakers in Hungary, Polish-speaking nobles in Galicia, and many peasant peoples (Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats and others). The only thing holding them together was loyalty to the emperor.
Who held power, and who was new. A small landed aristocracy ruled. They owned country estates and town houses, spoke French in high society, and married among themselves. Most people were peasants; in Eastern and Central Europe, serfs worked huge estates. With industry came new groups: a working class, and middle classes of industrialists, businessmen and professionals. Among the educated, liberal middle classes, the idea of national unity grew popular.
What liberals wanted. Liberalism comes from the Latin liber, 'free'. Liberals stood for:
- each person's freedom, and equality before the law;
- government by consent: a constitution and an elected parliament, not kings and Church privilege;
- protecting private property.
But equality did not mean everyone could vote. In revolutionary France only property-owning men could vote. The Napoleonic Code treated women as minors, under their fathers and husbands. Women and men without property later fought for equal political rights.
Liberals and free markets. In the German lands, Napoleon had made a confederation of 39 states, each with its own money and measures. A merchant going from Hamburg to Nuremberg in 1833 passed 11 customs barriers, paying about 5 per cent duty at each. The cloth measure, the elle, was a different length in every town. So in 1834, at Prussia's lead, most German states formed a customs union, the zollverein. It removed tariff barriers and brought over thirty currencies down to just two. Railways followed. Shared economic interests pushed towards national unity.
Conservatives and the Congress of Vienna (1815). After Napoleon's defeat, governments turned conservative: they wanted to keep the monarchy, Church, social ranks, property and family. But they had learnt from Napoleon that modernising (a modern army, efficient officials, ending serfdom) could make kings stronger. In 1815, the winners (Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria) met at Vienna, hosted by Austria's Chancellor Metternich. They:
- brought back the Bourbon kings in France;
- set up states on France's borders to stop it expanding (the Netherlands with Belgium; Genoa added to Piedmont);
- gave Prussia new lands in the west, Austria control of northern Italy, and Russia part of Poland.
The new regimes were autocratic and used censorship to silence criticism.
Revolutionaries go underground. Fearing arrest, many liberal-nationalists joined secret societies to train revolutionaries. Giuseppe Mazzini, born in Genoa in 1805, joined the Carbonari and was exiled in 1831. He founded Young Italy in Marseilles and Young Europe in Berne. He believed God meant nations to be humanity's natural units, so Italy must become one united republic. Conservatives feared him: Metternich called him the 'most dangerous enemy' of the social order.
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