Chapter 30 Part 1 Development Chapter 7 Nationalism 1

Each has its own special mission, and these missions will go hand in hand towards the completion of the general mission of mankind.Such a mission constitutes national character.Nationality is sacred. - Code of Young European Brothers, 1834 The day will come... when the good Germans stand upon the bronze pedestals of liberty and justice, with in one hand the torches of enlightenment that cast the beams of civilization to the farthest corners of the earth, and in the other the scales of the arbitrators , people will implore her to settle disputes, those who now shout at us that might makes right, and kick us with their boots in contempt.

—Excerpt from a speech by Siebenpfeiffer in Hamburg, 1832 1 After 1830, as we have seen before, the general movement in favor of the revolution split.One consequence of the split deserves special attention, namely, a self-conscious nationalist movement. The best symbol of the development of this movement is the "youth" movement created or initiated by Mazzini after the revolution of 1830: Young Italy, Young Poland, Young Germany, Young France (1831-1836), and the 1940s chronologically similar to Young Ireland.Young Ireland is the predecessor of the Fenians (or the Irish Republican Brotherhood), which was the only revolutionary group that survived and succeeded today among the conspirators in the early 19th century. The Irish Republican Army is famous for its armed struggle.These movements are not important in themselves, and the mere presence of Mazzini is enough to render them completely ineffective.But symbolically, they are extremely important, as evidenced by the adoption of labels such as 'Young Czechs' or 'Young Turks' by subsequent nationalist movements. They marked the fragmentation of revolutionary movements in Europe into National revolutionary movements. Among such national revolutionary groups, there is no doubt that there is approximately the same political program, strategy, tactics, etc., and even approximately the same banner-almost always some form of tricolor flag. Their members believe that: There is no contradiction between their own demands and those of other peoples, and they do envisage a brotherhood that liberates themselves as well as other peoples. On the other hand, the various national revolutionary groups tend to choose a savior for everyone role in justifying its mentality of focusing first on its national interests. With Italy (according to Mazzini), Poland (according to Mickiewicz), the suffering peoples of the world will This is a concept that can easily degenerate into a conservative or imperialist policy. Among those Russian pro-Slavophiles who emphasized that they were the Holy Roman Third Reich, and those who later repeated that they would rule in the German spirit. Well, we can see this danger in Germans all over the world. It is agreed that this ambiguity of nationalism can be traced back to the influence of the French Revolution. But during the French Revolution, there was really only one great revolution in the world nation, and it has done enough to make it clear to the world that it is the headquarters of all revolutions and the necessary motive force for the liberation of the world. It is therefore reasonable to count on Paris; "Italy," "Poland," or "Germany," represented by factions and émigrés, had meaning only for Italians, Poles, and Germans.

Emerging nationalism would not deserve much attention if it were confined to members of the National Revolutionary Brotherhood.In fact, it represented the greater forces that emerged in the 1830s as a result of the dual revolutions and manifested themselves in political consciousness.Among these forces, the most immediate and powerful ones were the dissatisfaction of small landowners or squires, and in many countries the sudden emergence of a national middle class, or even a lower middle class, whose spokesmen were mostly professional intellectuals. The revolutionary role of the petty gentry is perhaps best illustrated in Poland and Hungary.In general, the local land barons had long since found it possible and desirable to make a deal with absolutism and foreign domination.Hungarian landowners were generally Catholic and had long been absorbed into the social pillars of the Vienna court, few of whom participated in the 1848 revolution.The memory of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzecpospolita) made the Polish landowners more nationalistic, but the most influential quasi-nationalist faction among them, the Czartoryski Group, was facing Luxurious emigrants living at the Hotel Lambert in Paris, operating, always in favor of union with Russia, and preferring diplomacy to insurrection.Economically, they were rich enough to pay for what they needed, if not too wastefully; and, if they liked, even had the financial means to invest enough in improving their land to benefit from the economic development of the era .Count Szechenyi, one of the few moderate liberals of this class and an advocate of economic progress, donated his annual income of around 60,000 florins to the newly formed Hungarian Academy of Sciences.There is no evidence that his standard of living was affected by this selfless and generous gift.On the other hand, the small gentry, who were distinguished from other poor peasants only by their birth (about one-eighth of the Hungarian population is said to have the status of gentry), had neither the means to make their land holdings profitable, Nor was there any inclination to compete with Germans or Jews for middle-class wealth.If they cannot live decently on their rents, and the age of decay deprives them of the opportunity to join the army, they may consider law, administration, or some intellectual career, if their education is not too bad, but not bourgeois Activity.Such squires had long been a bastion of opposition to national absolutism, alien, and plutocratic rule, hidden behind (as in Hungary) the dual support of Calvinists and county institutions.Naturally, their disapproval, dissatisfaction, and desire for more jobs will now fuel nationalism.

Paradoxically, the national commercial class that arose during this period was a lesser nationalist factor.It is recognized that in the fragmented Germany and Italy, the advantages of a unified national market are very obvious. The author of "Deutschland uber Alles" (Deutschland uber Alles) calls: Ham and scissors, boots and garters, Wool and soap, yarn and beer. The sense of national unity that the national spirit could not promote, Germany has achieved through the customs union.There is little evidence, however, that the Genoese shippers (who would later provide much of Garibaldi's financial support), for example, were more fond of the Italian national market than the far more prosperous Mediterranean trade.In a multi-ethnic empire, the core of industry and trade developed in a specific province will of course express dissatisfaction with the existing discrimination, but what they really love in their hearts is obviously the great imperial market that is open to them at this moment, and It is not an independent small ethnic market in the future.Therefore, since Polish industrialists have the whole of Russia at their disposal, few of them will naturally support Polish nationalism.When Palacky declared on behalf of the Czechs that "if Austria does not exist, one must be created", he was not only appealing to the monarchy against Germany, but also expressing a large but backward economic core of the empire reasonable aspirations.However, commercial interests sometimes led nationalism, as in Belgium, where a strong community of industrial pioneers felt, for very odd reasons, that they would be disadvantaged under the powerful rule of the Dutch business bloc.Belgium fell to the Netherlands in 1815.But this is a special case.

The strong supporters of middle-class nationalism at this stage were the lower and middle professional, administrative and intellectual classes, in other words, the educated classes. (Of course, these people are not clearly distinguished from the commercial class, especially in backward countries, where land administrators, notaries, lawyers, etc., are usually equal to the main accumulators of rural wealth.) To be precise, middle-class nationals The vanguard of socialism fought along the lines of educational progress, and educational progress was manifested in the entry of large numbers of "newcomers" into fields still occupied by a few elites at the time.The growth of schools and universities shows the progress of nationalism, since schools and especially universities are its conscious fighters: between Germany and Denmark, over the Schleswig-Holstein question, Two conflicts broke out in 1848 and 1864, but before that, the University of Kiel and the University of Copenhagen had a fierce dispute over this issue in the mid-1840s.

Progress in education is evident, although the total number of "educated" remains small.The number of pupils at the French National Schools doubled between 1809 and 1842, and grew especially rapidly under the July Monarchy, but even so by 1842 there were only 19,000 (all Children with secondary education, the total is 70,000).In Russia around 1850, there were only about 20,000 middle school students out of a total population of 68 million.Although the number of college students is increasing, their total number is very small.It is hard to imagine that after 1806, the Prussian university youths who were so instigated by the emancipation of the mind, it is said that there were no more than 1,500 in 1805; 1581 youths were trained, i.e. only about 100 were recruited per year.The prominence of students in the Revolution of 1848 makes it easy to forget the fact that the entire continent of Europe, including the non-revolutionary British Isles, may have as little as 40,000 university students, although the number is still rising.The number of university students in Russia rose from 1,700 in 1825 to 4,600 in 1848.And even without growth, social and university changes (see Chapter 15) have given students a new sense of community.Nobody remembers that in 1789 the University of Paris had some 6,000 students, since they played no independent role in the Revolution.But by 1830, no one could ignore the importance of this group of young college students.

A small elite could operate in a foreign language; and once the educated cadre became sufficiently numerous, the national language would come into its own (as in the struggles of Indian states for recognition of their languages ​​from the 1840s onwards).Therefore, when textbooks and newspapers are published in the national language, or some official activities are carried out, it represents a crucial step in the development of the nation. This step was taken in many parts of Europe in the 1830s.Thus the first important Czech works on astronomy, chemistry, anthropology, mineralogy, and botany were written or completed during these ten years; The same goes for the first batch of school textbooks. In 1840, Hungarian replaced Latin as the official language of the Hungarian Parliament, although the University of Budapest, under the control of Vienna, did not cease teaching Latin until 1844. (However, the struggle for the use of Hungarian as the official language has been going on intermittently since 1790.) In Zagreb, Gai from 1835 used what is still a dialect complex. The first written language, published his "Croatian Gazette" (later renamed "Illyrian National Gazette" (Illyrian National Gazette)).In countries that had an official national language very early, such changes are not easy to measure.Interestingly, however, for the first time after 1830 the number of books published in German (rather than Latin and French) consistently exceeded 90%, while the number of French books fell below 4% after 1820. (Only 60 percent of all books in Germany were published in German in the early eighteenth century, and the proportion has risen steadily since then.) Moreover, the general surge in publications gives us a comparable indicator.For example, the number of books published in Germany was about the same in 1821 and 1800, about 4,000 a year; but in 1841 it rose to 12,000.

Of course, most Europeans and non-Europeans remain uneducated.Indeed, apart from the Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, Swiss, and American citizens, no people could be described as literate in 1841.Several peoples can be said to be almost illiterate, like the southern Slavs, who had a literacy rate of less than 1.5 percent in 1827 (even the Dalmatians who were recruited into the Austrian army at a later date had only 1% could read and write), or like the Russians with only 2% literacy (in 1840), like the Spaniards, the Portuguese (after the Peninsular War, a total of only 8,000 children seem to be in school) and all but the Lombards and Pied Italians outside Monte. In the 1840s, even in Britain, France and Belgium, 40%-50% of the population was illiterate.Illiteracy is by no means an obstacle to political consciousness, but there is in fact no evidence that, except in countries that have been transformed by dual revolutions—France, Great Britain, the United States, and (politically and economically dependent on Great Britain) Ireland—that kind of modern Nationalism is a powerful mass force.

To equate nationalism with the literate class does not mean that the Russian masses, for example, do not feel "Russian" when they encounter people and things that are not Russian.For the general public, however, the test of nationality remains religion: Spaniards are determined by Catholicism, Russians by Orthodox Christianity.However, direct contact with foreign cultures, though increasing, was still rare, and certain national sentiments, such as those of the Italians, remained entirely foreign to the masses at large.They don't even share a common national written language, and speak dialects that are barely intelligible to each other.Even in Germany, patriotic myths exaggerate the extent of anti-Napoleonic national sentiment to the extreme.France remained extremely popular among western Germany, especially among fighters conscripted by the French Freedom.A people subject to the Pope or the Emperor might express discontent with the French, who also happened to be Germany's enemy, but there was hardly any national sentiment in it, let alone any desire for a nation-state.Moreover, the fact that nationalism was centered on the middle class and the gentry was enough to make the poor skeptical (as the more advanced elements of the Southern Italian Carbonari and other conspirators did).Polish radical democratic revolutionaries eagerly tried to mobilize the peasantry, even to the point of proposing land reforms, but they almost completely failed.Even if these revolutionaries actually announced the abolition of serfdom, the Galician peasants would have turned against the Polish revolutionaries in 1846, preferring to massacre the gentry and trust the royal officials.

The alienation of nations, perhaps the most important phenomenon of the nineteenth century, unraveled deep, ancient, localized traditionalisms.Until the 1820s, most parts of the world had little immigration or emigration, except under the compulsion of armies and starvation, or in societies that traditionally migrated frequently, such as France in the north for seasonal construction work Midland peasants, or itinerant craftsmen in Germany.Being away from home also signifies a kind of homesickness, but not the milder form of homesickness that would become the peculiar psychosis of the nineteenth century (reflected in countless sentimental pop songs), but the first clinical term used by doctors to describe living abroad. The old-fashioned Swiss mercenaries, that kind of mental illness strong enough to kill.The disease was found in conscripts in the French Revolutionary War, especially among Bretons.The pull of the far northern forests is so strong that it can make an Estonian maid leave her very benevolent Saxon employer in Kugelgen, where she is free, to be reduced to serfdom at home.Emigration and emigration (of which data on emigration to the United States is most readily available) increased markedly after the 1820s, although it did not reach significant proportions until the 1840s, when 1.75 million people crossed the North Atlantic (nearly triple the figure in the 1830s).Even so, the only major immigrant people outside Britain were the Germanic peoples, who had long sent their descendants to serve as settled farmers in Eastern Europe and the United States, as itinerant artisans on the Continent, and as mercenaries in various countries.

In fact we can say that there was only one Western national movement in 1848 that was truly mass-based and tightly organized, and that even this time it benefited greatly from its alignment with the Church, a powerful traditional supporter. .That was the Irish Union movement under the leadership of Daniel O'Connell (1785-1847).O'Connell, a loud-voiced lawyer-agitator of peasant origin and the first (and until 1848 the only) popular charisma-type leader, brought the politics of the then backward masses into motion. Awakening of consciousness. (Before 1848, the only comparable figure was another Irishman, Feargus O'Connor [Feargus O'Connor, 1794-1855], who had become a symbol of the British Chartist movement; and perhaps the Hungarian Kosu S. Kossuth may have acquired some popular popularity before the revolution of 1848, although in the 1840s his popularity was actually gained as a champion of the gentry, since he was later canonized by historians as a saint , so it is difficult to fully see his early experience.) O'Connell's Catholic Association, in its successful struggle for Catholic emancipation (1829), won popular support and the confidence of the clergy (this not fully confirmed).In no case was this federation to have anything to do with Protestant and Anglo-Irish squires.It was a movement of the farmers and the Irish lower middle classes of that impoverished big island.The Liberators, propelled into leadership by successive waves of peasant uprisings, were the prime mover throughout that shocking century in Irish political history.This force was organized in secret terrorist societies, which themselves helped to break down Irish provincialism.O'Connell's goal, however, was neither revolution nor national independence, but rather a moderate middle-class Irish self-government through agreement or negotiation with the British Whigs.In fact, he was not a nationalist, let alone a peasant revolutionary, but a moderate middle-class autonomist.Indeed, the main criticism of him by later Irish nationalists (much as the more radical Indian nationalists criticized Gandhi, who occupied a similar place in their country's history), was that he could have mobilized the whole of Ireland against the British , but he deliberately refused.However, despite this, this does not change the fact that the movement he led did indeed have genuine support from the general Irish public.