Nationalism

Before the late eighteenth century, most Europeans owed loyalty to a dynastic monarch, a local lord, or a religious community rather than to an abstract nation. The Habsburgs, Romanovs, and Bourbons ruled sprawling, multilingual empires held together by tradition and force, not by a shared cultural identity. It was the upheaval of the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars that injected the principle of popular sovereignty into European political life, transforming subjects into citizens and planting the seed that a people defined by common language, history, and culture ought to govern themselves.

The central question that nationalism posed to nineteenth-century Europe was deceptively simple: Who constitutes a nation, and what political arrangements does that identity demand? Answering it required redrawing borders, toppling empires, and, in many cases, waging war. Understanding how and why that happened is essential to mastering the AP European History curriculum from the post-Napoleonic era through the twentieth century.

Nationalism is the doctrine that a group of people who share a common identity—typically defined by language, ethnicity, history, or culture—deserve self-governance within their own sovereign state. Though it appears natural, the concept is historically constructed: intellectuals, politicians, and movements deliberately forged national identities out of diverse local traditions. Historians distinguish several distinct strands, each with different origins and implications for the European order.

No single cause explains nationalism's explosive growth in the nineteenth century. Rather, multiple reinforcing factors converged. Romanticism supplied the emotional and cultural raw materials by valorizing folk traditions and the uniqueness of each people. Print capitalism—the spread of cheap newspapers and books in vernacular languages—created what Benedict Anderson famously called imagined communities, enabling millions of strangers to perceive themselves as compatriots. Meanwhile, industrialization knit regional economies together through railroads and customs unions such as the German Zollverein (1834), making political fragmentation seem economically irrational. Finally, war and great-power diplomacy—from Napoleon's redrawing of the map to Bismarck's carefully orchestrated conflicts—provided the decisive catalysts that turned nationalist aspirations into state-building facts.

Two Paths to the Nation-State

Nineteenth-century nationalism operated through two broad mechanisms that the AP exam frequently contrasts. The first was unification: merging politically fragmented territories that shared a perceived national identity into a single state. Italy and Germany are the paradigmatic cases. The second was separation or secession: national groups breaking free from multinational empires. Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire (1821–1832), Belgian independence from the Netherlands (1830), and the various Slavic movements within the Habsburg and Ottoman empires all followed this logic.

Case Study: German Unification (1864–1871)

Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, pursued unification not through liberal constitutionalism but through what he called "blood and iron"—three calculated wars that isolated each opponent diplomatically before defeating them militarily. The Danish War (1864) secured Schleswig-Holstein; the Austro-Prussian War (1866) expelled Austria from German affairs and created the North German Confederation; and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) rallied the southern German states under Prussian leadership, culminating in the proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles.

Case Study: Italian Unification (1848–1871)

Italian unification (the Risorgimento) blended liberal idealism with Realpolitik. Mazzini provided the republican vision, Garibaldi supplied revolutionary military action (notably the Expedition of the Thousand in 1860), and Cavour orchestrated diplomacy—securing French support against Austria in 1859. The result was a constitutional monarchy under the Piedmontese House of Savoy, though significant regional and social divisions persisted long after formal unification. As Massimo d'Azeglio reportedly quipped, 'We have made Italy; now we must make Italians.'

The diagram above captures an important historiographic argument: nationalism was not a single phenomenon but a mutable ideology that evolved in response to changing political contexts. Early in the century, liberalism and nationalism were allies—both opposed the conservative settlement of 1815. After 1848, conservative statesmen learned to co-opt nationalist energy, and by the fin-de-siècle, integral nationalism had broken free from liberal constraints entirely, feeding into imperialism, anti-Semitism, and ultimately the catastrophic wars of the twentieth century.

AP European History requires you to analyze primary sources through the lens of historical reasoning skills such as causation, comparison, and continuity and change over time. Below is a worked example showing how to approach a passage related to nationalism in a document-based context.

Nationalism did not stop reshaping Europe after 1871. Its later mutations carried consequences that extended well into the twentieth century and remain relevant for later units of the AP European History curriculum. Understanding the trajectory from liberal nationalism to integral nationalism to fascism is essential for grasping the origins of World War I, the collapse of multinational empires, and the rise of totalitarian regimes.

As you move through subsequent AP units, keep in mind that nationalism's relationship to other ideologies shifted over time. In the early nineteenth century, nationalism and liberalism were natural partners, both opposing the conservative order. By 1900, nationalism had been detached from liberal values by figures who fused it with Social Darwinism, anti-Semitism, and imperial expansion. This transformation helps explain why the same idea that inspired democratic revolutions in 1848 could also help ignite the most destructive wars in human history.