Idea of the Nation & European Union

•  1848, Frédéric Sorrieu, dream of a world made up of ‘democratic and social Republics’,
• Statue of Liberty - One hand, Torch of Enlightenment & Other Charter of the Rights of Man - symbols of absolutist institutions.
• During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force which brought about sweeping changes in the political and mental world of Europe. End result of these changes was the emergence of the nation-state in place of the multi-national dynastic empires of Europe.

French Revolution and the Idea of the Nation

• French, full-fledged territorial state in 1789 under the rule of an absolute monarch.
• French Revolution led to the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens.
• Ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) emphasised the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution.
• Estates General renamed the National Assembly.
• A centralised administrative system was put in place and it formulated uniform laws for all citizens within its territory.
• Internal customs duties and dues were abolished and a uniform system of weights and measures was adopted.
• Regional dialects were discouraged and French, as it was spoken and written in Paris, became the common language.
• French nation to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism.
• Different cities of Europe, setting up Jacobin clubs.
• French armies began to carry the idea of nationalism abroad.

• Napoleon set reforms, Through a return to monarchy Napoleon had, no doubt, destroyed democracy in France, but order to make the whole system more rational and efficient.
• Civil Code of 1804 or Napoleonic Code - Away all privileges, exported to the regions under French control.
• Dutch Republic, in Switzerland, in Italy and Germany, Napoleon simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues.
• Town restrictions were removed.
• Transport and communication systems were improved.
• Uniform laws, standardised weights and measures, and a common national currency.
• French armies were welcomed as harbingers of liberty.
• New administrative arrangements did not go hand in hand with political freedom.
• Increased taxation, censorship, forced conscription into the French armies required to conquer the rest of Europe.

Nationalism in Europe

• Germany, Italy and Switzerland were divided into kingdoms, duchies and cantons whose rulers had their autonomous territories. Eastern and Central Europe were under autocratic monarchies.
• The Habsburg Empire that ruled over Austria-Hungary.
• Many different regions and peoples. Such differences did not easily promote a sense of political unity.

Aristocracy and the New Middle Class

• Socially and politically, a landed aristocracy was the dominant class.
• Their families were often connected by ties of marriage.
• West - Tenants & Small Owners, East & central - Cultivated by serfs.
• Western and parts of Central Europe the growth of industrial production and trade, emergence of commercial classes.
• Industrialisation began in England in the second half of the eighteenth century, but in France and parts of the German states it occurred only during the nineteenth century.
• Ldeas of national unity following the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity.

Liberal Nationalism

• Europe were closely allied to the ideology of liberalism.
• New middle classes liberalism stood for freedom for the individual and equality of all before the law.
• Nineteenth-century liberals also stressed the inviolability of private property.
• Yet, Equality before the law did not necessarily stand for universal suffrage.
• Men without property and all women were excluded from political rights.
• Napoleonic Code went back to limited suffrage and reduced women to the status of a minor.
• Nineteenth and early twentieth centuries women and non-propertied men organised opposition movements demanding equal political rights.
• Economic Sphere, abolition of state-imposed restrictions on the movement of goods and capital.
• Each of these possessed its own currency, and weights and measures.
• In 1833 from Hamburg to Nuremberg, 11 customs barriers, own system of weights and measures.
• Obstacles to economic exchange and growth by the new commercial classes, who argued for the creation of a unified economic territory allowing the unhindered movement of goods, people and capital. In 1834, a customs union or zollverein was formed at the initiative of Prussia and joined by most of the German states. Number of currencies from over thirty to two.

New Conservatism after 1815

• Defeat of Napoleon in 1815, European governments were driven by a spirit of Conservatism (traditional institutions of state and society).
• However, did not propose a return to the society of pre-revolutionary days.
• Modernisation could in fact strengthen traditional institutions like the monarchy. It could make state power more effective and strong.
• 1815, – Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria – Collectively defeated Napoleon. Congress was hosted by the Austrian Chancellor Duke Metternich - the Treaty of Vienna of 1815.
• The Bourbon dynasty, which had been deposed during the French Revolution, was restored to power, and France lost the territories it had annexed under Napoleon.
• German confederation of 39 states that had been set up by Napoleon was left untouched.
• Conservative regimes set up in 1815 were autocratic. Impose censorship laws, and reflected the ideas of liberty and freedom associated with the French Revolution.

Revolutionaries

• The Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. Born in Genoa in 1807, he became a member of the secret society of the Carbonari.
• He subsequently founded two more underground societies, first, Young Italy in Marseilles, and then, Young Europe in Berne.
• Italy be forged into a single unified republic within a wider alliance of nations, unification alone could be the basis of Italian liberty.
• Secret societies were set up in Germany, France, Switzerland and Poland.
• Mazzini’s relentless opposition to monarchy and his vision of democratic republics frightened the conservatives.

Age of Revolutions: 1830-1848

• Revolutions were led by the liberal-nationalists belonging to the educated middle-class elite.
• First upheaval took place in France in July 1830, Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815, overthrown by liberal revolutionaries installed constitutional monarchy.
• ‘When France sneezes,’ Metternich once remarked, ‘the rest of Europe catches cold.’
• The July Revolution led to Belgium breaking away from UK of Netherlands
• Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century, Struggle begin in 1821. European civilisation and mobilised public opinion to support its struggle against a Muslim empire.
• Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation.

Romantic Imagination and National Feeling

• Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation.
• True German culture was to be discovered among the common people – das volk.
• In the case of Poland, which had been partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century by the Great Powers – Russia, Prussia and Austria.
• Poland no longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept alive through music and language.
• After Russian occupation, the Polish language was forced out of schools and the Russian language was imposed everywhere.
• In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule.
• Use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.

Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

• In 1830s, economic hardship in Europe.
• Small producers in towns were often faced with stiff competition from imports of cheap machine-made goods from England.
• 1848, Barricades were erected and Louis Philippe was forced to flee, National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, granted suffrage to all adult males above 21, and guaranteed the right to work. National workshops to provide employment were set up.
• 1845, weavers in Silesia had led a revolt against contractors, supply finished textile, it reduce weavers Income.

Revolution of the Liberals

• Parallel to the revolts of the poor, unemployed and starving peasants. In 1848, a revolution led by the educated middle classes was under way.
• February 1848, France the abdication of the monarch and a republic based on universal male suffrage had been proclaimed. In other parts of Europe where independent nation-states did not yet exist – such as Germany, Italy, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire - demands for constitutionalism with national unification.
• On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives marched in a festive procession to take their places in the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St Paul. They drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament.
• When the deputies offered the crown on these terms to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly.
• Parliament was dominated by the middle classes who resisted the demands of workers and artisans and consequently lost their support. So, end troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband.
• Issue of extending political rights to women was a controversial one within the liberal movement.
• Women had formed their own political associations, founded newspapers and taken part in political meetings and demonstrations.
• Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St Paul, women were admitted only as observers to stand in the visitors’ gallery.
• Monarchs realise that the cycles of revolution, be ended by granting concessions to the liberal-nationalist revolutionaries.
• After 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce the changes that had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815.
• Thus serfdom and bonded labour were abolished both in the Habsburg (Grant autonomy in 1867) dominions and in Russia.

Time line of European Union

• 1849
• Emergence of Pan European Feeling
• Victor Hugo used the term 'United States of Europe'
• 1946
• The first great effort to bring the nations of Europe together
• Council of Europe was Formed
• 1952
• Paris Treaty - The first step in the federation of Europe
• Creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
• 1957
• Rome Treaty - Creation of the European Economic Community (EEC)
• 1993
• Maastricht Treaty - Creation of the European Union (EU)
• 2009
• Lisbon Treaty - Amendment to the Maastricht Treaty and the Rome Treaty