Hence, the legitimacy and defensibility of state borders is a crucial factor in whether a nationalist group or state will use force against another. If they are too one-sided i. Several perceptual factors, entwined with political factors can also be regarded as indirect causes, in certain cases creating the conditions within communities that can lead to an increased likelihood of conflict.
Cultural identity is crucial in forming a coherent nationalist grouping — the greater divide between cultural groups the greater the likelihood of war.
Nationalist sentiments may be instilled in a population through nationalist symbols, propaganda, emphasis on national history, language and other methods. Historical conflict and disagreements between national or ethnic groups may increase the likelihood of war — the disagreement over mutual history between the two groups may lead to a victim mentality, with both sides feeling aggrieved and wronged by the other.
This is especially true in the case of war crimes and other such results of conflicts — the more a group can attach blame to another group, the higher the likelihood of war between the two opposing sides.
A nationalist government may invoke such feelings of division in order to appeal to popular opinion; hence the less legitimate a government, the more likely such nationalist divisions can lead to war.
National minorities may be targeted by such political scape-goat policies, where ethnic or racial stereotyping can be employed to bolster a sense of nationalism in the face of a perceived internal threat. The weaker the influence of independent institutions on both the leaders and population of nationalist states or groups, the more inclined the public is to believe nationalist propaganda and act upon it. Hence, perception of both the internal nationalist identity and the perceived threat to such an identity in a nationalist state or group can lead to an increased aggressiveness towards either a different national group or a national minority group, in both cases increasing the likelihood of war.
Nationalism has the potential to be either a direct or indirect cause of war. The likelihood that war will occur as a result of nationalist confrontations is dependent on several factors; the nature of the nationalist group or state in question their likelihood to resort to force over diplomacy, for example , the galvanising effect of nationalism in the face of a perceived external threat or indeed conflict within a state either due to the suppression of national minorities whose national identity is under threat or the use of violence as a political tool by secessionist nationalist groups within the state.
An example of the latter is the Nazi-Germany of the s who would be responsible for the most devastating war in human history. Hence, nationalism holds the potential to ignite entire populations, as in many cases they feel it is their very identity that is under threat, however it is incorrect to assume a nationalist state or group is more inclined to turn to violent methods than a different politically-orientated entity.
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Key Facts And Information. Let us know more about the concept of Nationalism! Nationalism can be defined as a deep sense of patriotism. Nationalists hold their country in high regard and place its interests above those of other nations. Pre-war nationalism was fueled by imperialism, both political and economical, and pop culture present in the works of penny press novelists.
Nationalism was also experienced in parts of Southern Europe where some ethnic minorities wanted autonomy and independence. Scholars agree that one of the fundamental reasons behind the outbreak of World War I was the growth of nationalism in Europe.
Such an idea was a result of Enlightenment thinking on equality,, freedom, and democracy. Nationalism was very common in early 20th-century Europe and is considered as a significant cause of World War I. This article charts the expansions and contractions of nationalism and the national idea throughout the 19 th century by highlighting a series of pivotal points in the modern period post , wherein nationalism as ideology and political programme took shape.
Only the violence of the war and its outcome shattered such beliefs. The ideology of nationalism is intimately connected to the revolutionary turmoil that began in France at the end of the 18 th century and thereafter spread across Europe. Partial, because the Arc does not include any locations in the Habsburg, Russian and Ottoman Empires, regions that were not occupied by the Napoleonic armies, but where the ideals of the French Revolution also spread. In these conflicts at the beginning of the 19 th century, the counter-revolution was eventually triumphant, and absolutist rule was re-asserted and confirmed at the Congress of Vienna in However, as we shall see, the men who conducted the Congress of Vienna could not erase the memory of the revolutionary years, and the forces of revolution and counter-revolution, of absolutism and Enlightenment, and of nation and empire would continue to collide throughout the 19 th century.
Political sovereignty and political organization were now hotly contested spheres, and this was true not only in Paris, but also in Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, and Constantinople. Nationalism, then, introduced a disequilibrium into the political order throughout Europe, one that would continue to shape international relations until the outbreak of the First World War.
The French Revolution was the child of the Enlightenment, but it was also the parent of modern and mass politics. The notion that sovereignty was the property of the people obviously called for a much broader level of political participation and mobilization than had existed previously. Indeed, the orthodox opinion not entirely undisputed amongst theorists is that nationalism is a modern phenomenon.
The men of the French Revolution were educated bourgeoisie, lawyers, journalists, acting and speaking on behalf of the masses, but themselves part of a social elite. In an important sociological study of the spread of nationalism in East Central Europe, Miroslav Hroch identifies a three-stage process to the dissemination of the national idea, starting with its incubation within a tiny group of intellectuals, moving to a broader strata of patriots and nationalist activists, and finally permeating the population at large.
The spread of nationalism, then, could be helped or hindered depending on the extent to which the lands in question had been touched by modernization. Nationalism penetrated more slowly, or not at all, in pre-industrial and agrarian parts of the country, East Central and South Eastern Europe, Russia, the Ottoman lands in Anatolia, and so on. Moreover, nationalist activists in central and eastern Europe were both impressed by the progress of national programmes in the industrialized and modern parts of Europe to their west, and were also somewhat ashamed that their own societies were falling behind.
Part of the process of making nationalism a programme attractive and comprehensible to the masses involved veiling its modern and novel character. Often national activists would cast the nation and the national idea back into a primordial past, asserting that the nation had existed always and throughout time, instead of owning that it was a product of the modern age.
Such myths and memories were especially prevalent in central and eastern Europe: during the early-modern period the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires had defeated and subsumed numerous medieval states in this region, upon whose ruins they now stood.
This, of course, was an eminently usable history for nations that were still subsumed into empires Habsburg, Ottoman, Russian. Romantic nationalism of this kind tended to take the form of a triptych: the first panel depicted the glory of a golden age; the second panel, its fall; and the third, still to be painted, its restoration, which would be achieved in the near future at the expense of imperial masters. The goal was not cohabitation, which was, in most cases, already in existence, but rather the creation of an autonomous or even independent nation.
Nationalism and national identity was in this way established as an oppositional force against empire, and was thus seen, quite correctly, as a potential threat to the imperial status quo in the Habsburg and Ottoman lands. As we shall see, this threat became ever starker as nationalism gained traction throughout Europe following the integrations of Italy and Germany in the latter part of the 19 th century.
As noted, the French Revolution sent shockwaves throughout the continent, both in terms of the immediate military successes of the Napoleonic armies and in the longer-term example of its popular challenge to the absolutist order in Europe, an example which could be emulated by peoples across the continent, even after the original revolutionary flames had been dowsed.
Nowhere was this truer than in the Habsburg empire, which was at the beginning of the 19 th century an absolutist state held together through its imperial institutions and the dynastic principle, but whose subjects were divided by numerous languages, religions, and historical traditions , all of which had the potential to serve as the material for nationalist awakening in the wake of To an extent, this apparent fragmenting of imperial rule during the 19 th century along national lines was related to modernization; since nationalism and national identity are closely linked to modernity and modernization, the passing of the Habsburg monarchy into the modern era was also the passing of the traditional means of imperial rule and life and the rise of discrete national forces.
One of the guiding forces behind this re-establishment was Klemens von Metternich , the Austrian chancellor who saw in the French Revolution and its legacy as both a foreign and a domestic threat to the Habsburg Empire. The Great Power rivalries and vested interests tied up with the Eastern Question see below , and the establishment of entrenched and adversarial political and potentially military alliances at the end of the 19 th and beginning of the 20 th century, drastically diminished the common ground upon which the Concert of Europe had once stood.
Nationalism, should it seep into the Habsburg monarchy, threatened to turn the empire from an integral state into a multi-national and fragmented empire. It marked the appearance of vernacular newspapers and reading rooms, for example, as well as early forms of nationalist associational life, sporting and singing societies, and gymnastic organizations.
The impact of these initiatives was often very restricted: the actual and indeed potential readership for vernacular newspapers was in most cases very low, given the levels of literacy in certain parts of the monarchy, and membership to nationalist associations was not nearly as high as many activists had hoped.
As Pieter Judson and others have shown, national identity in the 19 th century was very often subordinate, or even non-existent, with people turning instead to local, regional, or other forms of identification. The turmoil of in the Habsburg lands, however, was also an attempt at national revolution, with many of the non-Germanic peoples in the Habsburg Empire calling for some kind of autonomy, even independence.
The Austro-Hungarian agreement showed that nationalism was not necessarily an irresistibly corrosive force seeping through the sinews of the Habsburg State. The Ausgleich complicates the notion, long-held in the historiography of the origins of the First World War, that nation and empire were diametrically opposed forces, irreconcilable to each other and thus bound to clash violently.
In the last quarter of the 19 th century, the Habsburg approach of squaring nationalist forces with imperial realities was looking increasingly anachronistic. This was not only because of the ever-greater appeal of nationalism to the subject peoples of the Habsburg Empire; it was also due to the emergence, in quick succession but under very different circumstances, of two powerful new national states onto the European stage: Italy and Germany.
The emergence of Germany, in particular, dramatically altered the balance of power in Europe and changed the nature of international relations in the last quarter of the 19 th century. The unification of Italy, however, came first in , following important military victories for Italian nationalist forces in alliance with imperial France over the Habsburgs at Magenta and Solferino.
Whereas Cavour believed that Piedmont, with its liberal politics and its constitutional monarchy, should serve as the nucleus of the new unitary Italy, enlarging its political system and institutions so as to cover the entire country, Mazzini saw such political traditions as too sterile to ignite the passions of the masses. The unification, achieved with assistance in Sicily from the colourful adventurer and Mazzinian Giuseppe Garibaldi , left a number of matters still unresolved.
There were also many territories coveted by the men of the Risorgimento that remained outside of the unified Italian state: the unredeemed lands, or Italia Irredenta : the Trentino in the Austria Tyrol and various cities and towns on the Adriatic coast, most importantly the key port of Trieste.
Of even greater urgency was the fact that, in spite of the political union of Italy, many subjects of the new state did not identify strongly - or indeed at all - with the Italian nation. The great differences in social and economic fortunes in the various parts of the new state, the prevalence of regional, local, or confessional identities, were all great enemies of the Cavourian and Mazzinian dream of a united and integral Italy.
Both the Cavourian and Mazzinian approaches to state- and nation-building served as inspiration and example to national activists throughout Europe.
There was also a Mazzinian legacy. Here was a dream of peaceful coexistence, not of violent confrontation. It was not far removed from the Wilsonian vision that was applied to Europe after the First World War. Indeed, many Europeans were duly impressed with the vigour of Mazzini and the success of this underground, conspiratorial network. The other great national unification of the second-half of the 19 th century, that of Germany, took place under very different circumstances. Whereas Italy was unified largely through the efforts of the constitutional monarchy of Piedmont-Sardinia, and thus came to adopt the liberal traditions of that state at a national level, the German principalities came together by the force of the largest pre German state, Prussia, and with the political, diplomatic, and military efforts of the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck , Prime Minister from Prussia was a far more conservative state than Piedmont, and a far more conservative state than many of the remaining German principalities, which it dwarfed in terms of political and industrial might.
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