History
5: Lecture 18
The New Nation-States, 1848-1871
Introduction
• International politics (1848-1871) were about the creation
of a Europe of nation-states
• What is a nation-state? A state that corresponded roughly
to the “nation”: a people who share a common culture,
ethnicity, language, religion and history-and who recognize each other
as sharing these characteristics; communication is key
• Regional, linguistic, ethnic, and racial differences were
not the only ones that made the notion of the unified nation-state
seem precarious in the 19th c, social differences did as well
• There is nothing natural about “the nation”, “the
state”, nor about “society”; nor about their relationships.
Nation-states had to be made. And they are very much a creation of
the latter half of the 19thc.Produced by both force and culture
I Conflict and Compromise in Existing Nation –States
• Great Britain and France had been nation-states for centuries.
But these states had to mediate the new interests of various religious,
social and cultural groups in order to survive
• The French Second Empire (1851-1871); Louis Napoleon>from
liberty to authority; champion of economic progress; Haussmann’s
Paris; regime ends in defeat to Prussia, and new revolution (Paris
Commune, March-May 1871) slides 1-6
• Great Britain; Victorian age of global dominance; era of political
and moral reform; faith in progress (Mill and Darwin); failure of
liberal policies in Ireland and India
II The Art of Making Nation-States
* Italy (1848-1870): Guiseppe Mazzini, 1848-9; Charles Albert of Piedmont;
Camillo Cavour and Guiseppe Garibaldi unite the seven states and the
Austrian territories of Lombardy Venetia to form a constitutional
monarchy; France plays a crucial role; the Risorgimento (“rebirth”)
is a fragile unity, regarded by many as incomplete. Slide 7
• German Empire created between 1849 and 1871, not by nationalist
surge but by military might of the strongest of the German states,
Prussia, led by Otto von Bismarck; a militarist state, the middle
class adopts the aristocratic values of the Junkers (Nietzsche)- slides
8-9
III The Multi-national Empires
• The Russian and Habsburg (after 1867, Austro-Hungarian) dynastic
Empires did not aspire to be nation –states. Nationalism in
eastern Europe has two faces: a threatening centrifugal force; a new
cohesive force-Pan-Slavism
• Russia and the reforms of Tsar Alexander II (1855-1881)):
end of serfdom, liberalization of institutions; intelligentsia, populism
(Alexander Herzen, 1812-1870)
• The Habsburg (Austro-Hungarian) Empire; a dual monarchy created
by Ausgleich (Compromise) of 1867.Separate capitals, legislatures
and governments but common army, finances, foreign policy. Hungarian
and Austrian parts held together by dynastic bond in Francis Joseph
(1848-1916) Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary. German speaking Austrians
and Magyar speaking Hungarians are master races. No autonomy for subject
nationalities –Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Poles, Italians. Slide
10
Conclusion
* Nationalism dominant ideology of 19thc, allied with liberalism
* Nationalism not limited to nation-states; active in Russian empire.
* New nation states Germany and Italy have to be integrated and reshaped
and this takes many decades.
* Nationalism, cohesive force within nation-states, divisive and explosive
within the international system.
Lecture 19 Outline
Liberalism, Feminism and Socialism
Introduction
• 19th c. is age of “Isms”: liberalism, romanticism,
feminism, socialism and nationalism
• An “Ism” is a “system of ideas” or
coherent socio-political vision. A key concept from the French Revolution,
the idea of “ideology”.
I John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Liberalism
• Origins of liberalism in Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832);
calculus of the greatest good>English reform movement
• John Stuart Mill: a super-rational intellectual.
• Romanticism and Mill’s reaction to rationalism>On
Liberty
• The liberal ideal of self-realization of the individual
II Feminism
• 18th c. origins: Rousseau’s Emile (1762) (difference)
vs. Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1790) (sameness)
• Napoleonic code (1804) and English Common Law; juridical dominance
of husbands
• Feminists emerge in the 1830s and 1840s (e.g. George Sand);
women’s journals and political clubs: child custody rights;
equal property rights; suffrage.
• J.S.Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869)> Married
Women’s Property Act (1882); no women’s suffrage until
WWI and after.
III Socialism
• “The social question”: 1830s and 40s>investigations
into factory and housing conditions; Society of St.Vincent de Paul
(1820s); poor laws (1834) child labor laws 1833 and 1841
• Utopian Socialism: Saint Simon and Charles Fourier: communalism
and alternative planned societies
• Trade Union Socialism: Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)
• Paris Commune (1871) last great popular uprising of 19th.c
ends era of urban revolution in Europe.
IV Karl Marx
• Hegelian origins of Marx’s thought
• Marx’s conversion to materialism
• From philosopher to activist (1840s): The Communist League
(1847); Communist Manifesto (1848); The First International (1864)
• Marx’s legacy: greatest impact among intellectuals in
societies in the early stages of industrialization.