History

• In 1848, Frédéric Sorrieu, a French artist, prepared a series of four prints visualising his dream of a world made up of 'democratic and social Republics'
• The first print (Fig. 1) of the series

  • Shows the peoples of Europe and America – men and women of all ages and social classes – marching in a long train, and offering homage to the statue of Liberty as they pass by it
• The statue of Liberty


  • Personified Liberty as a female figure, bearing the torch of Enlightenment in one hand and the Charter of the Rights of Man in the other
• On the earth in the foreground of the image lie the shattered remains of the symbols of absolutist institutions
• Absolutist


  A government or system of rule that has no restraints on the power exercised
• Utopian


  A vision of a society that is so ideal that it is unlikely to actually exist
• In Sorrieu's utopian vision, the peoples of the world are grouped as distinct nations, identified through their flags and national costume
• Leading the procession, way past the statue of Liberty, are the United States and Switzerland, which by this time were already nation-states
• France, identifiable by the revolutionary tricolour, has just reached the statue
• The German peoples did not yet exist as a united nation – the flag they carry is an expression of liberal hopes in 1848 to unify the numerous German-speaking principalities into a nation-state under a democratic constitution
• Following the German peoples are the peoples of Austria, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Lombardy, Poland, England, Ireland, Hungary and Russia
• From the heavens above, Christ, saints and angels gaze upon the scene. They have been used by the artist to symbolise fraternity among the nations of the world
• During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force which brought about sweeping changes in the political and mental world of Europe
• The end result of these changes was the emergence of the nation-state in place of the multi-national dynastic empires of Europe
• Nation-state


  One in which the majority of its citizens, and not only its rulers, came to develop a sense of common identity and shared history or descent
• This commonness did not exist from time immemorial; it was forged through struggles, through the actions of leaders and the common people
• Ernst Renan: ''A nation is the culmination of a long past of endeavours, sacrifice and devotion. A heroic past, great men, glory, that is the social capital upon which one bases a national idea. To have common glories in the past, to have a common will in the present, to have performed great deeds together, to wish to perform still more, these are the essential conditions of being a people. A nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity … Its existence is a daily plebiscite … A province is its inhabitants; if anyone has the right to be consulted, it is the inhabitant. A nation never has any real interest in annexing or holding on to a country against its will. The existence of nations is a good thing, a necessity even. Their existence is a guarantee of liberty, which would be lost if the world had only one law and only one master.''
• Plebiscite


  A direct vote by which all the people of a region are asked to accept or reject a proposal
• The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789
• The political and constitutional changes that came in the wake of the French Revolution led to the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens
• The revolution proclaimed that it was the people who would henceforth constitute the nation and shape its destiny
• Measures and practices introduced by the French revolutionaries to create a sense of collective identity amongst the French people


  • The ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen)
  • A new French flag, the tricolour
  • The Estates General was elected by the body of active citizens and renamed the National Assembly
  • New hymns were composed, oaths taken and martyrs commemorated, all in the name of the nation
  • 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 of the nation
• The revolutionaries further declared that it was the mission and the destiny of the French nation to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism, in other words to help other peoples of Europe to become nations
• With the outbreak of the revolutionary wars, the French armies began to carry the idea of nationalism abroad
• Within the wide swathe of territory that came under his control, Napoleon set about introducing many of the reforms that he had already introduced in France
• The Civil Code of 1804 – usually known as the Napoleonic Code – did away with all privileges based on birth, established equality before the law and secured the right to property
• This Code was exported to the regions under French control
• In the Dutch Republic, in Switzerland, in Italy and Germany, Napoleon simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system and freed peasants from serfdom and manorial dues
• In the towns too, guild restrictions were removed
• Businessmen and small-scale producers of goods, in particular, began to realise that uniform laws, standardised weights and measures, and a common national currency would facilitate the movement and exchange of goods and capital from one region to another
• However, in the areas conquered, the reactions of the local populations to French rule were mixed
• Initially, in many places such as Holland and Switzerland, as well as in certain cities like Brussels, Mainz, Milan and Warsaw, the French armies were welcomed as harbingers of liberty
• But the initial enthusiasm soon turned to hostility, as it became clear that the 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, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of the administrative changes
• In mid-eighteenth-century Europe there were no 'nation-states' as we know them today
• What we know today as 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 within the territories of which lived diverse peoples
• They did not see themselves as sharing a collective identity or a common culture
• Often, they even spoke different languages and belonged to different ethnic groups
• The Habsburg Empire that ruled over Austria-Hungary was a patchwork of many different regions and peoples