Nationalism was a radical new ideology that emerged in the years after 1815 — an idea destined to have an enormous influence in the modern world. In 1808, in an address to a German audience in French-occupied Berlin, the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte called on all Germans “to have that organic unity in which no member regards the fate of another as the fate of a stranger.”1 Fichte and other early advocates of the “national idea” argued that the members of what we would call today an ethnic group had their own spirit and their own cultural unity, which were manifested especially in a common language, history, and territory. In fact, such cultural unity was more a dream than a reality as local dialects abounded, historical memory divided the inhabitants of the different states as much as it unified them, and a variety of ethnic groups shared the territory of most states.

Nevertheless, many European nationalists sought to make the territory of each people coincide with well-defined boundaries in an independent nation-state. (See “Viewpoints 24.1: Different Views on Nationalism.”) It was this political goal that made nationalism so explosive in central and eastern Europe after 1815, when there were either too few states (Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire) or too many (the Italian peninsula and the German Confederation), and when different peoples overlapped and intermingled.

Scholars have struggled to understand how the nationalist vision, often fitting poorly with existing conditions and having the potential for tremendous upheaval, was so successful in the long run. The nationalist vision triumphed partly because the development of complex industrial and urban society required better communication between individuals and groups.2 The need for communication promoted the development of a standardized national language that was spread through mass education, creating at least a superficial cultural unity. Nationalism also came into being as a result of the ardent writings and speeches of nationalists themselves, which helped to spread the new idea of the nation as a natural community that should possess control over its destiny as a sovereign state. Those who believed in the new ideology thus helped create “imagined communities,” which bound inhabitants through the abstract concept of an all-embracing national identity. Nationalists and leaders brought citizens together with emotionally charged symbols and ceremonies, such as ethnic festivals and flag-waving parades that celebrated the imagined nation of spiritual equals.3

Between 1815 and 1850 most people who believed in nationalism also believed in either liberalism or radical democratic republicanism. A common faith in the creativity and nobility of the people was perhaps the single most important reason for the linking of these two concepts. Liberals and especially democrats saw the people as the ultimate source of all good government. They agreed that the benefits of self-government would be possible only if the people were united by common traditions that transcended class and local interests. Thus individual liberty and love of a free nation overlapped greatly.

Yet early nationalists also stressed the differences among peoples, and they developed a strong sense of “we” and “they”; the “they” was often viewed as the enemy. Thus, while European nationalism’s main thrust was liberal and democratic, below the surface lurked ideas of national superiority and national mission that eventually led to aggression and conflict against supposedly inferior peoples in Africa and Asia, and to the great world wars of the twentieth century.