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The Age of Nationalism

1850–1914

In the years that followed the revolutions of 1848, Western society progressively developed, for better or worse, an effective organizing principle capable of coping with the many-sided challenges of the unfinished industrial and political revolutions and the emerging urban society. That principle was nationalism — mass identification with the nation-state. Just as industrialization and urbanization had brought vast changes to class relations, family lifestyles, and science and culture, the triumph of nationalism remade territorial boundaries and forged new relations between the nation-state and its citizens.

The rise of nationalism and the nation-state, enormously significant historical developments, was by no means completely predictable. Nationalism had been a powerful force since at least 1789, but the goal of creating independent nation-states, inhabited by people sharing a common ethnicity, language, history, and territory, had repeatedly failed, most spectacularly in the revolutions of 1848. By 1914, however, most Europeans lived in nation-states, and the ideology of nationalism had become an almost universal faith in the Western world. The governments of the new nation-states took various forms, from conservative authoritarianism to parliamentary monarchy to liberal republicanism. Whatever the political system, in most cases the nation-state became increasingly responsive to the needs of its people, opening the political franchise and offering citizens at least rudimentary social and economic benefits. At the same time, the nation-state demanded more from its citizens, most obviously in the form of rising income taxes and universal military service. Nationalism, which before 1848 appealed primarily to liberals seeking political reform or national independence, became an ever more conservative ideology. At its worst, populists and fanatics eagerly manipulated and sometimes abused the growing patriotism of ordinary people to justify exclusionary policies against Jews and other ethnic minorities, and to promote expansionary projects in overseas colonies.

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