CHAPTER 1 - Nationalism in Europe (HISTORY SOCIAL SCIENCE CLASS 10)

 

Nationalism in Germany and Unification of Germany by Otto Von Bismarck

The year 1830 to 1848 was the age of revolutions in Europe. After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association with democracy and revolution. Nationalist sentiments were often mobilized by conservatives for promoting state power and achieving political domination over Europe. The conservatives were the people who supported the monarchs and nobles. They believed that monarchy and nobility should exist.

Liberals was a group of people who wanted a nation which tolerated all religions. They opposed the uncontrolled power of dynastic rulers. They wanted to safeguard the rights of individuals against government. In 1848 the liberals tried to unite the different regions of the German confederation into a nation-state governed by an elected parliament. This liberal initiative to nation-building was, however, repressed by the combined forces of the monarchy and the military, supported by the large landowners (called Junkers) of Prussia. From then on, Prussia took on the leadership of the movement for national unification. Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, was the architect of this process carried out with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy. Three wars over seven years – with Austria, Denmark and France – ended in Prussian victory and completed the process of unification

In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed German Emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles. On the bitterly cold morning of 18 January 1871, an assembly comprising the princes of the German states, representatives of the army, important Prussian ministers including the chief minister Otto von Bismarck gathered in the unheated Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles to proclaim the new German Empire headed by Kaiser William I of Prussia.

The nation-building process in Germany had demonstrated the dominance of Prussian state power. The new state placed a strong emphasis on modernizing the currency, banking, legal and judicial systems in Germany. Prussian measures and practices often became a model for the rest of Germany