Bronx Community College
HIS 10/HIS 11, History of the Modern World
Topic Four: Nationalism Across the Globe
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Nationalism:
o Previous to the French Revolution, European society and personal loyalty was
determined by one’s family, clan, or estate.
o Definition:
 Humanity is divided into nations (group sharing a common culture and history).
 One’s individual nature is most influenced by national identity.
 Individuals owed their nation the greatest loyalty.
 Because of their uniqueness, no one nation should be ruled by another.
 Each nation should have its own independent territory: nation-state.
o Empire = antithesis of nationalism:
 Example: Austro-Hungarian Empire:
 Ruled from Vienna, Austria, the Austro-Hungarian Empire included
peoples from the following nations:
o Croatians
o Czechs
o Germans
o Hungarians
o Italians
o Poles
o Romanians
o Serbs
o Slovaks
o Slovenes
o Turks
o Ukrainians
German Romanticism:
o Romanticism: a philosophical movement in reaction to the universalism of the
Enlightenment which promoted a “belief in personal salvation through traditional
religious faith or a quasi-religious worship of nature.”
o Romantic authors and artists opposed the Enlightenment’s overemphasis on reason.
o Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)—German poet: Faust (1806), a story of a protagonist
who is willing to literally “sell his soul to the devil” in a “relentless search for
knowledge, experience, and fulfillment.”
o Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)—English author: Frankenstein: of The
Modern Prometheus (1817), a story of a scientists who “ripped the secret of life from the
very fabric of the universe.”
o Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm: brothers who collected German folktales and wrote
dictionaries of German mythology and language in an effort to “establish an authentically
German heritage.”
The Second Reich: Otto von Bismarck & the German State:
o In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the German nation was divided among 38
small states in Central Europe. A majority of these states participated in the Zollverein
(customs union) and all were members of the German Diet, a loose confederation of
states.
o In the wake of the 1848 revolutions, liberal nationalists met at Frankfort to draft a
constitution that would have created a German state with a constitutional monarchy, only
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to find that both the monarchs of Prussia and Austria were NOT interested in such powersharing.
o German unification started in the 1860s with Prussia as its nucleus and Otto von
Bismarck as its architect.
 Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898): conservative Junker who had previous served
Prussia in the German Diet and ambassador to France and Russia.
 Advocate of Realpolitik: “doing whatever was necessary to preserve the power
of the state or nation.”
 1861: Bismarck showed Kaiser Wilhelm I how to use realpolitik (misinterpreting
a temporary spending bill in order to get funds to modernize and enlarge the
Prussian army.
 1862: Bismarck became Prussian prime minister and began work on
consolidating the other German states around Prussia.
 Two issues he needed to resolve:
 To convince the other German states that it was better for them to
surrender their independence to Prussia than continue to exist as separate
countries.
 To convince the other German states to exclude Austria, the only other
state powerful enough to challenge Prussia for the leadership of the new
Germany.
 Above achieved in the success of Prussia in three wars.
 Prusso-Danish War (1864): Prussia & Austria led the other German
states into war against Denmark for control of Holstein and reversing the
defeat of Prussia, Holstein, Schleswig and other German states by
Denmark in the First Schleswig War ((1848-1851).
o Outcomes:
 Austria gained control of Holstein.
 Prussia gained control of Schleswig.
 Bismarck rallied the German states together against a
common enemy.
 Austro-Prussian War (1866): Bismarck defeated the militarily inferior
Austrians.
o Outcomes:
 Five German states formally become part of Prussia.
 Twenty-two other German states form the North German
Confederation with the King of Prussia as its ruler.
 Bismarck successfully isolated Austria.
 Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871): Bismarck needed to bring in Bavaria,
Baden & Württemberg to complete the unification; he does so by using a
common enemy. During a succession crisis in Spain, Bismarck edited
the text of an email, making it sound like the French ambassador had
insulted the Prussian king.
o Outcomes:
 Prussian troops occupied Paris.
 18 January 1871, Wilhelm I becomes Kaiser.
 France surrenders two primarily German-speaking
territories (Alsace & Lorraine)
 Germany imposed a one-billion-dollar war indemnity on
France and occupied the country until it was paid.
The United States & the American Civil War:
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From the period of the Napoleonic Wars, the two sections of the United States had been
diverging economically.
 North & East: economic activity concentrated on banking, finance, commerce,
and manufacturing.
 South: economic activity concentrated on agriculture, which, in turn, was divided
between subsistence farming and commercial agriculture, such as cotton, rice,
and indigo cultivation.
 Slavery:
 Northern slavery was characterized by small numbers of slaves owned by
an individual, working in a variety of areas.
 Starting in the first decades of the nineteenth century, northern state
legislatures began the process of gradual manumission.
o New York State:
 Gradual manumission law passed which said any child
born of a slave after 4 July 1799 would be freed at the
age of 25 (women)/28 (men).
 Any slave born before 4 July 1799 was a slave for life.
 Gradual Emancipation Law of 1817: All slaves were
freed on 4 July 1827. Any child born between 1817 and
4 July 1827 would remain a servant until the age of
twenty-one.
 Southern slavery began to expand to the west and south as the demand
for cotton grew. (Origins of the phrase “Being sold down the river.”)
 Westward Expansion and Senate Representation:
 1820: Missouri Compromise.
 1850: Compromise of 1850.
 Kansas-Nebraska Act
 The American Civil War & Reconstruction:
 Catalyst for war: 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln.
 War fought mostly in the South.
 The North had advantages in both white men and manufacturing.
 Reconstruction:
o Rebuild the southern economy based on a northern model of free
labor.
o Tie the North and West together by transcontinental railroads.
o Transform African Americans from property to legal persons:
 1865: 13th Amendment: abolished the institution of
slavery.
 1868: 14th Amendment: established an American
citizenship, including African Americans, and promoted
black voting by placing penalties in the House of
Representatives for those states that prevented blacks
from voting. “Due Process” & “Equal Protection” were
also guaranteed
 1870: 15th Amendment: Prevented discrimination based
on race in voting
Mexico:
o Like other Latin American countries following independence from Spain, Mexico was
controlled by the Creole elite, who tended to favor autocratic rulers—Caudillos
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Closely allied with the Creole elites was the Catholic Church, which held control over
approximately half the land in Mexico.
While a majority of the population, the lives of Indians, Africans, mestizos, and mulattos
did not change much from that under the Spanish.
During the first half of the nineteenth century, Mexico was burdened by a series of wars,
including one in which it lost the territory of Texas, and another, against the United
States, when it lost approximately half of its remaining territory.
At the same time, Mexico engaged in international borrowing to finance these conflicts
and the autocratic rule of the Caudillos.
During the 1850s, La Reforma movement was established with the goals of:
 Civil rule
 Winning foreign investment
 Separation of church & state
 Abolishing debt servitude
 Re-distributing farmland from plantation owners to those individuals who
actually worked the land
 Bringing the military under civilian control
Benito Juarez (1806-1872), Zapotec Indian:
 Primary author of new constitution (1857):
 Guaranteed freedom of speech & press
 Reaffirmed abolition of slavery
 Separation of church & state
 Provided for civil marriage
 Abolished imprisonment for debt
 Placed the military under civilian control
 Guaranteed “freedom of conscience,” weaken the social power of the
Catholic Church as well as undercutting its special economic privileges
 Members of the Creole elites & the Catholic Church rebelled against the new
constitution.
 Juarez, with funds from the United States, was able to put down the revolution in
1861.
 The following year (1862), Archduke Maximilian of Austria, with a French army
and an invitation from the Mexican conservatives arrived in Mexico and control
over Mexico.
 Great Britain and Spain initially joined in because of Juarez’s suspension of debt
payments from the previous government.
 On May 5, 1862, Juarez defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla.
 In February 1867, the French withdrew from Mexico.
 Following the French’s departure, Juarez continued to battle Caudillos in the
northern provinces
Japan:
o In 1750, Japan won its independence from China, but continued to live in its cultural
sphere.
o Starting at the beginning of the 17th century and lasting for almost 250 years, Japan had
been controlled by powerful families or clans and run by a military dictator.
o This government controlled many aspects of the subjects’ lives and isolated Japan from
foreign relations and trade
o In July 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States sailed a fleet of steel naval
ships into Edo (Tokyo) Bay and requested a trade treaty with Japan.
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Fearful that Japan would suffer the same fate as China, which had its port cities
“confiscated” by European powers, the Japanese government later signed an accord
which:
 Established better treatment for shipwrecked sailors
 Established an American coaling station
 Opened two Japanese ports to American trade
Similar concessions were granted to Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France
Concessions to western powers:
 Low tariffs on imported goods
 Extraterritoriality
Above concessions led to armed resistance in the early 1860s failed
Under Emperor Mutsuhito (1868-1912) Japan experienced the Meiji Era:
 Capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo
 Feudalism & the Samurai class were abolished and weakened
 Modern western agricultural practices were implemented
 Steel & textile mills were erected
 A national bank was established to regulate currency
 Postal service was established
 Japan adopted the western calendar
 A compulsory education system was established
 Japanese army was developed under a Prussian model
 Japanese navy was developed under a British model
 1889 Emperor Mitsuhito conferred a constitution to the Japanese people based on
the Prussian model, which guaranteed certain privileges to the Japanese
aristocrats
 Limitation on voting permitted only 1% of the population to have their voices
heard
 Shinto religion, (“Ways of the Gods”), with its emphasis on ancestor worship,
was officially sponsored by the state
Japanese Expansion:
 By the turn-of-the-century, Japan was beginning to establish a colonial system:
 Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), control of Formosa (Taiwan)
 Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), control of Russian treaty ports in
China
 Annexation of Korea (1910)