19th-century nationalism and the unifications of Italy and Germany

After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 tried to restore Europe's old monarchies and balance of power. Three ideologies then competed: conservatism, which defended monarchy, tradition, and established churches; liberalism, which pushed for constitutions, elected legislatures, and individual rights; and nationalism, which in 19th-century Europe often meant the idea that people with a shared identity, such as a language, culture, history, or political community, should be loyal to their nation and govern themselves as one. A wave of revolutions in 1848 swept much of Europe but mostly failed. Nationalism succeeded in other ways. Italy, long divided into separate states, became the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 through the diplomacy of Count Camillo di Cavour of Piedmont-Sardinia and the military campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi; Venetia joined in 1866 and Rome in 1870. Germany was unified in 1871 under Prussian leadership by Otto von Bismarck, whose "blood and iron" strategy used wars against Denmark, Austria, and France. Nationalism also inspired independence movements, like Greece's in the 1820s, and strained multiethnic empires such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, tensions that later helped cause World War I.

This explanation is AI-generated and can occasionally be wrong. 🚩 Report