The Rise of Nationalism in 19th Century Europe: Key Concepts and Consequences

welcome to unit 7 of AP European History I'm Steve heimler and we are still in the time period 1815-1914. and this

video is all about how a strong sense of nationalism swept across the European continent in the 19th century and all

the consequences of said nationalism so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it okay the idea of

the nation's State came to dominate Europe during this period and it was definitely a new way to organize the

continent politically we look at a map of Europe today or anywhere else for that matter we're used to seeing that

these little lines separate one country from another but if you walk to the place where that border exists on a map

you would not see a line on the ground marking this country from that country those lines are made up by powerful

people and those lines didn't really become a thing until the period we're talking about in this video by the way

since we're in unit seven and you have exams coming up and the national exam looming in the not too distant future

you might want to check out my AP Euro review pack which has practice questions and exclusive review videos and

everything you need to get an A in your course and a five on your examinement to get that clicky finger out and check the

link in the description okay so what was it that created the occasion for these imaginary lines well in short it was the

rise of nationalism during this period nationalism as I've mentioned before is a feeling of strong identification with

one's own people and one's own cultural heritage and those bonds are strengthened by a shared history and a

shared language so now you have two elements that make up the nation state there's the nation which is to say the

people who share the language and the culture and then there's the state which is the land on which they live

surrounded by borders on a map and the government which rules over them so think about it this way I live in

Georgia and that means I live much closer to Cuba than I do to California and yet I feel more identified with

people who live in California than people who live in Cuba and why because Californians are Americans and we share

a cultural heritage and a history and for the most part a Common Language even though America doesn't really have an

official language but Cubans speak a different language bear a different history and cultural artifacts that do

not properly belong to me so I feel more identified with Californians than I do with Cubans now to be clear I'm not

saying one is better than another it's just identification nationalism will go there by the end of this video but

that's not what I'm saying now okay so a rising sense of nationalism during this period of European history is going to

cause more and more Europeans to to demand their own state where they live with their own people so now we need to

talk about how this growing nationalism encouraged loyalty to a state the first way nationalism gripped people was

because of romantic idealism remember when we talked about the rise of Romanticism in the last year romantic

artists and writers glorified their people's past and in doing so created an emotional fervor in the people to

reclaim that path for example the Grimm Brothers in Germany collected and published German fairy tales and folk

tale and these were the stories of the German people and when they read them it wasn't just entertainment it had the

effect of making them feel more German or take the French writer Victor Hugo whose novel Les Miserables was the story

of the Triumph of the French people against tyrants all of these artists had a way of binding their people together

as a people okay second nationalism was on the rise because of liberal reform the guy you need to associate with this

was Francis Napoleon III nephew of Bonaparte he opened the way for international trade through cooperation

with foreign markets and that boosted the French economy and he also instituted Universal male suffrage which

made him exceedingly popular and with his complete overhaul of the New Paris combined with everything else I just

said French nationalism grew significantly and then third nationalism was encouraged by movements of political

unification for example in the Italian states Giuseppe massini pushed to unite the various Italian political entities

into a single nation-state to that end he formed an Italian unification movement called young Italy and staged

uprisings around Italy now ultimately mazzini wasn't successful in his unification efforts but his works at the

stage for Italian unification which we will consider in another video fourth this growing nationalism encouraged a

growing racialism which was the idea that one race is superior to another that shouldn't be surprising since

nationalism is a strong identification with one owns people it's only a small step to believing that our people are

better than yours now there's a positive side to racialism and a negative side the positive side is represented by the

pan Slavic movement in Eastern and Central Europe these areas there were significant groups of Slavic peoples who

were under the Imperial Fist of the austro-hungarian and ottoman Empires and because they began to feel real

identification in their own people they longed to have a state of their own because Russia was a Slavic Nation they

supported this movement and that support would eventually lead to war with ottomans but we'll consider that in

another video as well now the Dark Side of racialism came in the form of anti-Semitism and I reckon it needs its

own heaven now anti-Semitism by definition includes racist beliefs against the Jewish people European Jews

for the most part had a long history of marginalization in and around Europe but by this period while anti-Semitism was

still present many states have passed laws recognizing Jewish equality and ending much of the harassment that they

had endured both the rise of nationalism anti-Semitism rose right along with one of the key events that helped spark it

was the Dreyfus Affair in France Alfred Dreyfus was the captain in the French army who happened to be Jewish in 1894

he was accused of treason because he allegedly leaked secret information to Germany he was tried and found guilty

but the affair divided French society some argued that he was being accused simply because he was Jewish and others

precisely because he was Jewish viewed him with suspicion and thought the charges were believable after 10 years

Dreyfus was pardoned but not before the news had spread throughout Europe and resurrected the anti-Semitism that had

long Lane dormant in Eastern Europe This discrimination resulted in pogroms in which Jews were evicted from their homes

and violently attacked without reason now in response to this growing anti-semitism Jewish nationalist

movement known as Zionism rose up to defend against Theodore herzl was a German Jew who argued in 1895 that Jews

should have a land of their own and that land ought to be their ancestral home in Palestine that would remain only a dream

until after World War II but the origins of the nation of Israel began with herzl's nationalist movement all right I

know this is a lot of information to digest so slap yourself in the face wake up and let's keep going so if you've

been with me from unit 6 you already know that thanks to Clemens Von metternek and his engineering of the

concert of Europe conservatism Reigns Supreme across the European continent during the 19th century if you want a

quick review of that my AP Euro review pack will get it to you quick faster than it hurts but now we get to a new

generation of neoconservative leaders who are going to use nationalism to strengthen their grip on stage now I

already mentioned how Napoleon III did this with his liberal reforms in France so let me introduce you to another one

of these conservative leaders namely Otto von Bismarck of Prussia now remember what we would call Germany

today during this period was still a massive collection of smallish and among the most powerful of these states was

Prussia and it was Bismarck who was able to harness German nationalism as precious foreign minister and then prime

minister to take step store German unification in fact we're going to see in the next video how Bismarck

intentionally provoked Wars in order to rile the German people up with an overwhelming sense of nationalism so

that German unification could become a reality but nationalism was also the key in creating the dual monarchy of

Austria-Hungary after the Revolutions of 1848 the austrians attempted to suppress the rising Hungarian nationalism but

were ultimately unsuccessful the compromise is that they would create a dual monarchy with Austrian and

Hungarian Monarch this is their solution to stabilize the state by reconfiguring their concept of national Union so the

point is many of the results of this rise of nationalism won't occur until the next video but when it does we'll

begin to see that imaginary lines drawn on maps become a real and abiding reality all right click right here to

keep reviewing unit 7 of AP European History and click here to grab my video note guys which follow along exactly

with my videos here on YouTube and can help you learn all the content of the course I'll get you on the flip-flop I'm

Laurent