Tag Archives: The Modernization of Nations

When the king of Denmark died in late 1863, a controversy over Schleswig-Holstein gave Bismarck further opportunities. In brief, the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein at the southern base of the Danish peninsula had been ruled by the king of Denmark, but not as part of Denmark.

A fifteenth-century guarantee assured the duchies that they could never be separated from one another. Yet Holstein to the south was a member of the German Confederation; Schleswig to the north was not. Holstein was mostly German in population; Schleswig was mixed German and Danish.

The first major question facing the leaders of central Europe after the revolutions of 1848 was whether Prussia or Austria would dominate the German Confederation. The “Big German” solution called for federation with Austria; the “Little German” solution called for separation from Austria or even from south Germany. The “Little German” program also meant Prussian domination of the non-Austrian states, and therefore became Bismarck’s goal.

The new kingdom started out with the asset of favorable public opinion. Italian national unity seemed natural and desirable, and it had been achieved with little bloodshed through a mixture of Garibaldian romance and Cavourian realism. The enthusiasm that had brought the Risorgimento to fruition was now in the service of a united Italy.

Cavour was a superlatively adept practitioner of the brand of diplomacy often called Realpolitik, or the politics of realism and power. As chief minister of Piedmont, he cultivated French and English support, bringing Piedmont into the Crimean War on their side against Russia.

Italian national unity seemed remote after Piedmont’s two decisive defeats by Austria in 1848 and 1849, yet it was accomplished by 1870.

The three leaders of the Risorgimento in its years of triumph were the romantic nationalist adventurer Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882); Victor Emmanuel II of the house of Savoy (1849-1878), king of Piedmont-Sardinia (and later of a united Italy); and, above all, Victor Emmanuel’s chief minister, Count Camillo Cavour (1810-1861).

The Second Empire might have converted into a constitutional monarchy with full parliamentary government. Yet the changes had been wrung from an ailing and vacillating emperor by frequent popular agitation. It is also possible that a radical republican groundswell would have submerged the empire in any case.

The coup d’etat of December 2, 1851, was skillfully timed to coincide with the anniversaries of the coronation of Napoleon I and the greatest Napoleonic victory, Austerlitz.

Sometime between 1850 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, rural France joined urban France in expressing a common sense of identity—nationhood.

By the end of the century popular and elite cultures were united in their sense of patrie (fatherland), of nationality, even when they continued to disagree over the nation’s goals. The modernization of France at times set one French group against another; equally often, as external forces appeared to threaten France, it strengthened the sense of common identity and community.

In recent years Historians have often asked whether the best unit for study is a society or a nation, since many questions relating broadly to demography and society cannot be properly addressed within a single nation’s bor
ders.