The Rise of Nationalism in Europe

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: This is Chapter I of NCERT's India and the Contemporary World II (Reprint 2026-27), the first chapter of Section I, "Events and Processes". Its subject is how, "During the nineteenth century, nationalism emerged as a force which brought about sweeping changes in the political and mental world of Europe", ending in "the emergence of the nation-state in place of the multi-national dynastic empires of Europe". It feeds GS1 world history (the French Revolution, the unifications, the road to 1914) and gives the European yardstick for the next chapter, Nationalism in India.

Contemporary hook: Box 3 explains the black, red and gold tricolour as the "Flag of the liberal-nationalists in 1848, banned by the Dukes of the German states". It is Germany's flag today: Article 22(2) of the Basic Law reads "Die Bundesflagge ist schwarz-rot-gold" (the federal flag is black-red-gold).

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

State and nation-state. A modern state, "in which a centralised power exercised sovereign control over a clearly defined territory", had been developing in Europe for a long time. A nation-state is more: one "in which the majority of its citizens, and not only its rulers, came to develop a sense of common identity and shared history or descent". NCERT insists this was made, not inherited: "This commonness did not exist from time immemorial; it was forged through struggles, through the actions of leaders and the common people."

What makes a nation? Renan (Source A) rejects language, race, religion or territory as the test. A nation is "a large-scale solidarity", and "Its existence is a daily plebiscite": it rests on a shared past and a present will to live together.

Three builders. The chapter shows nations made by politics (revolutions, wars, diplomacy), by economics (the customs union, railways, a national market) and by culture (folk tales, language, music, painting, allegory). Most exam questions ask you to weigh one against another.

Two faces of nationalism. Before 1848 it marched with liberalism and democracy. "After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association with democracy and revolution", and by the last quarter of the century it had become "a narrow creed with limited ends" that fed imperial rivalry and war in 1914.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

Table 1: Timeline of the chapter

Source: NCERT ch. I "Nationalism in Europe" (Reprint 2026-27), pp. 3-27, including "Some important dates" (p. 8); rows with another basis: LeMO (Deutsches Historisches Museum), the House of Bavarian History and the Bundesarchiv (links in the Sources list).

Table 2: What the liberals stood for (NCERT exercise "Discuss" 1)

Source: NCERT ch. I, pp. 9, 17.

Table 3: The Vienna settlement, 1815 (NCERT activity, p. 11)

Source: NCERT ch. I, pp. 10-11. Host: Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor; powers: Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Table 4: Germany and Italy compared (NCERT exercises "Discuss" 3 and "Write in brief" 1b, 4)

Source: NCERT ch. I, pp. 19-22; the war dates are from LeMO (Deutsches Historisches Museum), linked in the Sources list.

Table 5: Culture in the making of nations (NCERT exercise "Discuss" 2)

Source: NCERT ch. I, pp. 13-15, 23-24.

Table 6: NCERT lines to read with care

Source: NCERT ch. I, pp. 9-25 (Reprint 2026-27); the other source named in each row is linked in the Sources list.

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

Sorrieu's dream (the chapter opening)

In 1848 the French artist Frédéric Sorrieu made four prints of "a world made up of 'democratic and social Republics'". In the first (Fig. 1), the peoples of Europe and America march past the statue of Liberty, who holds "the torch of Enlightenment" and "the Charter of the Rights of Man"; the symbols of absolutist institutions lie shattered in the foreground. The United States and Switzerland lead, "already nation-states"; France follows, then the Germans with the black, red and gold flag, though "the German peoples did not yet exist as a united nation". Christ, saints and angels in the sky "symbolise fraternity among the nations of the world".

1. The French Revolution and the idea of the nation

"The first clear expression of nationalism came with the French Revolution in 1789." It brought "the transfer of sovereignty from the monarchy to a body of French citizens" (exercise "Write in brief" 2). The revolutionaries built a collective identity through:

• the ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen);
• a new flag, the tricolour, in place of the royal standard;
• the Estates General, elected by active citizens and renamed the National Assembly;
• new hymns, oaths and martyrs, "all in the name of the nation";
• a centralised administration with uniform laws, no internal customs duties, and one system of weights and measures;
• French "as it was spoken and written in Paris" as the common language, with regional dialects discouraged.

They also declared it France's mission "to liberate the peoples of Europe from despotism". Students and the educated middle classes set up Jacobin clubs across Europe, and the French armies "began to carry the idea of nationalism abroad" (Fig. 2: Rebmann's almanac of 1798, "The people must seize their own freedom!").

Napoleon (exercise "Write in brief" 5). "Through a return to monarchy Napoleon had, no doubt, destroyed democracy in France, but in the administrative field he had incorporated revolutionary principles in order to make the whole system more rational and efficient." The Civil Code of 1804 "did away with all privileges based on birth, established equality before the law and secured the right to property". In the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, Italy and Germany he simplified administrative divisions, abolished the feudal system, freed peasants "from serfdom and manorial dues", removed guild restrictions and improved transport. Businessmen saw that uniform laws, weights and measures and "a common national currency" would help trade.

Reactions were mixed. At first the French were welcomed "as harbingers of liberty", but "the new administrative arrangements did not go hand in hand with political freedom": taxes, censorship and "forced conscription into the French armies" outweighed the gains. Fig. 4's plaque at Zweibrücken mocks the liberators: "Take freedom and equality from us, the model of humanity."

2. The making of nationalism in Europe

Mid-eighteenth-century Europe had no nation-states. Germany, Italy and Switzerland were "divided into kingdoms, duchies and cantons". The Habsburg Empire was "a patchwork of many different regions and peoples": German-speaking aristocrats in Bohemia, Italian-speaking Lombardy and Venetia, Magyar and other speakers in Hungary, a Polish-speaking aristocracy in Galicia, and subject peasant peoples. "The only tie binding these diverse groups together was a common allegiance to the emperor."

2.1 The aristocracy and the new middle class. A small landed aristocracy dominated the continent; "They spoke French for purposes of diplomacy and in high society." Most people were peasants: tenants and small owners in the west, serfs on vast estates in the east. Industry, which began in England "in the second half of the eighteenth century", created a working class and middle classes of industrialists, businessmen and professionals. "It was among the educated, liberal middle classes that ideas of national unity following the abolition of aristocratic privileges gained popularity."

2.2 Liberal nationalism (Table 2). The economic case is NCERT's best example. A merchant going from Hamburg to Nuremberg in 1833 passed "11 customs barriers" paying "a customs duty of about 5 per cent at each one of them". The elle, a measure of cloth, was 54.7 cm in Frankfurt, 55.1 cm in Mainz, 65.6 cm in Nuremberg and 53.5 cm in Freiburg. In 1834 a customs union or zollverein was formed "at the initiative of Prussia"; it abolished tariff barriers and "reduced the number of currencies from over thirty to two". Railways then harnessed "economic interests to national unification".

2.3 A new conservatism after 1815 (Table 3). Conservatives wanted to preserve "the monarchy, the Church, social hierarchies, property and the family", but they had learnt from Napoleon that "modernisation could in fact strengthen traditional institutions like the monarchy". In 1815 Britain, Russia, Prussia and Austria met at Vienna, hosted by Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor, and drew up a treaty "with the object of undoing most of the changes" of the Napoleonic wars. The regimes of 1815 were autocratic and imposed censorship; Fig. 6, The Club of Thinkers (c. 1820), asks: "How long will thinking be allowed to us?" Freedom of the press became a central liberal demand.

2.4 The revolutionaries. Repression drove liberal-nationalists into secret societies. Giuseppe Mazzini, born in Genoa in 1805 and a member of the Carbonari, was exiled in 1831 for attempting a revolution in Liguria; he founded Young Italy in Marseilles and then Young Europe in Berne (on the year, Table 6). He believed "God had intended nations to be the natural units of mankind", so Italy had to become "a single unified republic within a wider alliance of nations". Metternich called him "the most dangerous enemy of our social order" (exercise "Write in brief" 1a).

3. The age of revolutions, 1830-1848

The revolutions were led by "the educated middle-class elite": professors, schoolteachers, clerks and the commercial middle classes. In July 1830 liberal revolutionaries in France replaced the restored Bourbon kings with a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe. "When France sneezes," Metternich remarked, "the rest of Europe catches cold": an uprising in Brussels took Belgium out of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The Greek war of independence (exercise "Write in brief" 1c). Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire "since the fifteenth century". Its struggle began in 1821, backed by Greeks in exile and by West Europeans who admired ancient Greek culture and saw Greece as "the cradle of European civilisation". Lord Byron raised funds, went to fight and died of fever in 1824. "Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation."

3.1 The Romantic imagination (Table 5). Romantic artists and poets "criticised the glorification of reason and science and focused instead on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings". Delacroix's Massacre at Chios (Fig. 8) showed an incident in which "20,000 Greeks were said to have been killed by Turks". Herder held that "true German culture was to be discovered among the common people – das volk".

Vernacular language and folklore also carried "the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate". Poland, partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, survived in music and language: after the crushed rebellion of 1831, priests used Polish in church and religious teaching, and many were jailed or sent to Siberia.

3.2 Hunger, hardship and popular revolt. The 1830s were "years of great economic hardship": population outran jobs, migrants crowded city slums, small producers faced "cheap machine-made goods from England", and "The rise of food prices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in town and country." In 1848 food shortages and unemployment brought Paris onto the streets; Louis Philippe fled, and a National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, "granted suffrage to all adult males above 21, and guaranteed the right to work", setting up national workshops. The Silesian weavers (on NCERT's year, Table 6) rose against contractors who "drastically reduced their payments"; in Wilhelm Wolff's account, "eleven weavers were shot".

3.3 1848: the revolution of the liberals (exercises "Discuss" 1, "Write in brief" 1d). In Germany, Italy, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire the liberal middle classes "combined their demands for constitutionalism with national unification". Political associations met in Frankfurt and "decided to vote for an all-German National Assembly". "On 18 May 1848, 831 elected representatives marched in a festive procession to take their places in the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St Paul." They drafted a constitution for a German nation "headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament". Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia refused the crown (in two steps, Table 6) and joined other monarchs against the assembly. The parliament, dominated by the middle classes, lost the workers' and artisans' support; "In the end troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband."

Women and liberalism (exercise "Write in brief" 1e). Women had formed associations, founded newspapers and joined demonstrations, yet were denied the vote, and in St Paul's "women were admitted only as observers to stand in the visitors' gallery" (Fig. 10).

After 1848. Conservatives suppressed the liberal movements but "could not restore the old order". "Monarchs were beginning to realise that the cycles of revolution and repression could only be ended by granting concessions to the liberal-nationalist revolutionaries": serfdom and bonded labour were abolished in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia, and the Habsburgs granted the Hungarians more autonomy in 1867.

4. The making of Germany and Italy

4.1 Germany: can the army be the architect of a nation? (exercise "Write in brief" 4; Table 4). After 1848, nationalist sentiment "often mobilised by conservatives for promoting state power". The liberal initiative was repressed by "the monarchy and the military, supported by the large landowners (called Junkers) of Prussia", and Prussia took over the leadership. Its chief minister, Otto von Bismarck, was "the architect of this process", carried out "with the help of the Prussian army and bureaucracy". He had told the budget commission of the Prussian parliament on 30 September 1862 that the great questions of the time are decided "nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse" (not by speeches and majority resolutions) but "durch Eisen und Blut" (by iron and blood), as the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung prints the report. Three wars, with Denmark, Austria and France, "ended in Prussian victory and completed the process of unification". On 18 January 1871 princes, army representatives and ministers gathered in "the unheated Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles to proclaim the new German Empire headed by Kaiser William I of Prussia" (Fig. 11). The new state modernised "the currency, banking, legal and judicial systems", and Prussian practice became the German model. NCERT's activity on Fig. 13, a caricature from Figaro, Vienna, 5 March 1870, asks how it shows "the relationship between Bismarck and the elected deputies of Parliament".

4.2 Italy unified (exercise "Write in brief" 1b). Italy was split among dynastic states and the Habsburg Empire: the north under the Austrian Habsburgs, the centre under the Pope, the south under "the Bourbon kings of Spain" in NCERT's words; even the language had "many regional and local variations". Mazzini's failed risings of 1831 and 1848 left the task to Sardinia-Piedmont under Victor Emmanuel II, whose elites saw in a unified Italy "the possibility of economic development and political dominance". Chief Minister Cavour "was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat" and "spoke French much better than he did Italian". His alliance with France helped defeat Austria in 1859; Garibaldi's volunteers took South Italy and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860; in 1861 Victor Emmanuel II became king of united Italy. Yet the southern peasants "had never heard of Italia, and believed that 'La Talia' was Victor Emmanuel's wife!" Figs 14(a) and 14(b) map the states of 1858 and the years each joined.

4.3 The strange case of Britain (exercise "Discuss" 4). Some scholars call Britain the model nation-state, but it was made by "a long-drawn-out process", not a revolution. "There was no British nation prior to the eighteenth century": people were English, Welsh, Scot or Irish. The English parliament, which seized power from the monarchy in 1688, was the instrument. The Act of Union (1707) formed the "United Kingdom of Great Britain", and "The British parliament was henceforth dominated by its English members"; Scottish Highlanders were forbidden their Gaelic language and dress, and many were driven out. In Ireland the English backed the Protestants; after Wolfe Tone's failed revolt (1798), "Ireland was forcibly incorporated into the United Kingdom in 1801". The Union Jack, the anthem and the English language were promoted, and "the older nations survived only as subordinate partners in this union".

5. Visualising the nation

Artists gave the nation "a face" by personifying it as a woman who "did not stand for any particular woman in real life" (exercise "Write in brief" 3). France's figure was Marianne, "a popular Christian name, which underlined the idea of a people's nation"; she took Liberty's red cap, the tricolour and the cockade, and appeared on statues, coins and stamps (Fig. 16). Germania "wears a crown of oak leaves, as the German oak stands for heroism".

6. Nationalism and imperialism

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century nationalism "became a narrow creed with limited ends", and the great powers "manipulated the nationalist aspirations of the subject peoples in Europe to further their own imperialist aims". "The most serious source of nationalist tension in Europe after 1871 was the area called the Balkans" (exercise "Discuss" 5): a region of Slav peoples, much of it under an Ottoman Empire whose reforms had "very little success". The Balkan peoples used history to claim "their long-lost independence", were "fiercely jealous of each other", and became the stage for rivalry between Russia, Germany, England and Austro-Hungary. "This led to a series of wars in the region and finally the First World War." "Nationalism, aligned with imperialism, led Europe to disaster in 1914."

The colonised answered with nationalisms of their own. "European ideas of nationalism were nowhere replicated", but "the idea that societies should be organised into 'nation-states' came to be accepted as natural and universal". Fig. 20, a map celebrating the British Empire, shows "The domination of the world" as "the basis of Britain's national pride".

Did the 2020-21 edition differ?

Only in one sentence. The chapter was Chapter I in the 2020-21 edition, with the same figures and exercises, and the lines in Table 6 were already there. The change is Mazzini's age: the 2020-21 edition has him "Born in Genoa in 1807" and exiled "As a young man of 24"; Reprint 2026-27 reads "Born in Genoa in 1805" and "As a young man of 26". This page follows Reprint 2026-27.

Source: NCERT ch. I, 2020-21 edition (jess301.pdf in the whole-book zip, Wayback Machine capture of 9 October 2021).

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

Frames for Mains Answers

1. The French Revolution and the idea of the nation (gs1-pyq-2019-02, Mains 2019 GS1). Sovereignty passed to the citizens; la patrie and le citoyen; flag, assembly, hymns and martyrs; uniform laws, weights and language; the mission to free Europe "from despotism"; Napoleon's Code exported across Europe, then the backlash against conquest.

2. Liberal nationalism vs conservative state-building. Frankfurt 1848 (parliament, constitution, press freedom) failed; Bismarck's Eisen und Blut (iron and blood) and three wars succeeded. Use NCERT's own heading: "Can the Army be the Architect of a Nation?" Add Italy: Cavour's diplomacy, Garibaldi's volunteers, peasants who "had never heard of Italia".

3. From nationalism to 1914 (adjacent: gs1-pyq-2015-07, Mains 2015 GS1). The "narrow creed" of the late century; the Balkans; great-power rivalry "over trade and colonies as well as naval and military might"; "Nationalism, aligned with imperialism, led Europe to disaster in 1914." For Germany's share, start from the Prussian model of unification by war.

4. Nationalism, imperialism and the colonised world (adjacent: gs1-pyq-2013-12, Mains 2013 GS1). Imperial pride as national pride (Fig. 20); anti-imperial movements that "struggled to form independent nation-states"; the nation-state as the accepted norm.

Exam Strategy

Prelims fact-traps:

• The Confederation of the Rhine (Napoleon, 1806) is not the German Confederation (Vienna, 1815).
• Prussia's wars in order: Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), France (1870-71). NCERT lists them as Austria, Denmark, France.
• The Zollverein (1834) was formed at Prussia's initiative and cut currencies "from over thirty to two".
• Greece: struggle from 1821, recognised by the Treaty of Constantinople, 1832. Belgium broke from the Netherlands after July 1830.
• Marianne is France and Germania is Germany; the oak crown means heroism.

Mains: quote Renan for "what is a nation", List for economic nationalism, and Source C for the limits of liberalism.

Practice Questions

NCERT's exercises for this chapter have no MCQs. Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers): questions 1-5.

1. With reference to the Vienna settlement of 1815, as described by NCERT, consider the following statements:
1. The Bourbon dynasty was restored in France.
2. Austria was given control of northern Italy.
3. Belgium was made an independent kingdom.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (a). Belgium was put in the Kingdom of the Netherlands; it broke away after the July Revolution of 1830.

2. Arrange the following wars of Prussia in chronological order:
1. War with France
2. War with Denmark
3. War with Austria
Select the correct answer:
(a) 1-2-3
(b) 3-2-1
(c) 2-3-1
(d) 2-1-3

Answer: (c). Denmark (peace of 30 October 1864), Austria (1866), France (1870-71).

3. Which of the following pairs are correctly matched?
1. Friedrich List: the Zollverein as a means to bind Germans "into a nation"
2. Herder: the volksgeist of the common people
3. Carl Welcker: "Liberty is indivisible!"
Select the correct answer:
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (a). "Liberty is indivisible!" is Louise Otto-Peters; Welcker opposed equality between the sexes.

4. Consider the following statements about the unification of Italy:
1. Of the seven states, only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house.
2. Cavour was a republican revolutionary.
3. Rome joined Italy in 1870, after France withdrew its troops.
Which of the statements given above are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Answer: (c). NCERT: Cavour "was neither a revolutionary nor a democrat".

5. "After 1848, nationalism in Europe moved away from its association with democracy and revolution." Examine with reference to the unification of Germany and Italy. (150 words)

NCERT exercises (where the answers are on this page): Write in brief 1 (a) 2.4, (b) 4.2, (c) section 3, (d) 3.3 and Table 6, (e) Women and liberalism with Source C; 2 section 1; 3 section 5; 4 section 4.1 and Table 4; 5 Napoleon. Discuss 1 Table 2 and 3.3; 2 Table 5; 3 Table 4; 4 section 4.3; 5 section 6. Project: section 5 and Box 3.

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, India and the Contemporary World II, Textbook in History for Class X, ch. I "Nationalism in Europe", Reprint 2026-27 — ncert.nic.in PDF.
• NCERT, India and the Contemporary World II, front matter (Contents), Reprint 2026-27 — ncert.nic.in PDF.
• NCERT, India and the Contemporary World II, 2020-21 edition (whole-book zip), as archived on 9 October 2021 — Wayback Machine.
• Deutsches Historisches Museum, LeMO yearly chronicles: 1815, 1834, 1844, 1848, 1849, 1864, 1866, 1870, 1871.
• Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte (House of Bavarian History), glossary "Rheinbund" — hdbg.eu.
• Bundesarchiv, "April 1849" (Schlaglichter einer Revolution) — bundesarchiv.de.
• Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung, "Rede in der Budget-Kommission, 30.09.1862" — bismarck-biografie.de.
• Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 22 (Federal Ministry of Justice) — gesetze-im-internet.de.