TREATY OF CONSTANTINOPLE

TREATY OF CONSTANTINOPLE

As conservative regimes tried to consolidate their power, liberalism and nationalism came to be increasingly associated with the revolution in many regions of Europe such as the Italian and German states, the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, Ireland, and Poland. These revolutions were led by the liberal-nationalists belonging to the educated middle-class elite, among whom were professors, school- teachers, clerks and members of the commercial middle classes.

The first upheaval took place in France in July 1830. The Bourbon kings who had been restored to power during the conservative reaction after 1815, were now overthrown by liberal revolutionaries who installed a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head. ‘When France sneezes,’ Metternich once remarked, ‘the rest of Europe catches cold.’ The July Revolution sparked an uprising in Brussels which led to Belgium breaking away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

An event that mobilised nationalist feelings among the educated elite across Europe was the Greek war of independence. Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the fifteenth century. The growth of revolutionary nationalism in Europe sparked off a struggle for independence amongst the Greeks which began in 1821. Nationalists in Greece got support from other Greeks living in exile and also from many West Europeans who had sympathies for ancient Greek culture. Poets and artists lauded Greece as the cradle of European civilisation and mobilised public opinion to support its struggle against a Muslim empire. The English poet Lord Byron organised funds and later went to fight in the war, where he died of fever in 1824. Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an independent nation.

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK

THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION AND NATIONAL FEELING

THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION AND NATIONAL FEELING

The development of nationalism did not come about only through wars and territorial expansion. Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation: art and poetry, stories and music helped express and shape nationalist feelings.

Let us look at Romanticism, a cultural movement that sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment. Romantic artists and poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and science and focused instead on emotions, intuition, and mystical feelings. Their effort was to create a sense of a shared collective heritage, a common cultural past, as the basis of a nation.

Other Romantics such as the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people – das volk. It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of the nation (volksgeist) was popularised. So collecting and recording these forms of folk culture was essential to the project of nation-building.

The emphasis on vernacular language and the collection of local folklore was not just to recover an ancient national spirit, but also to carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate. This was especially so in the case of Poland, which had been partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century by the Great Powers – Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Even though Poland no longer existed as an independent territory, national feelings were kept alive through music and language. Karol Kurpinski, for example, celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.

(The French painter Delacroix was one of the most important French Romantic painters. This huge painting (4.19m x 3.54m) depicts an incident in which 20,000 Greeks were said to have been killed by Turks on the island of Chios. By dramatising the incident, focusing on the suffering of women and children, and using vivid colours, Delacroix sought to appeal to the emotions of the spectators, and create sympathy for the Greeks.)

Language too played an important role in developing nationalist sentiments. After the Russian occupation, the Polish language was forced out of schools and the Russian language was imposed everywhere. In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place which was ultimately crushed. Following this, many members of the clergy in Poland began to use language as a weapon of national resistance. Polish was used for Church gatherings and all religious instruction. As a result, a large number of priests and bishops were put in jail or sent to Siberia by the Russian authorities as punishment for their refusal to preach in Russian. The use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of the struggle against Russian dominance.

More to know

The Grimm Brothers: Folktales and Nation-building

‘Grimms’ Fairy Tales is a familiar name. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in the German city of Hanau in 1785 and 1786 respectively. While both of them studied law, they soon developed an interest in collecting old folktales. They spent six years travelling from village to village, talking to people and writing down fairy tales, which were handed down through the generations. These were popular both among children and adults. In 1812, they published their first collection of tales. Subsequently, both the brothers became active in liberal politics, especially the movement for freedom of the press. In the meantime, they also published a 33-volume dictionary of the German language.

The Grimm brothers also saw French domination as a threat to German culture and believed that the folktales they had collected were expressions of a pure and authentic German spirit. They considered their projects of collecting folktales and developing the German language as part of the wider effort to oppose French domination and create a German national identity.

Discuss

Discuss the importance of language and popular traditions in the creation of national identity.

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK

HUNGER, HARDSHIP AND POPULAR REVOLT

HUNGER, HARDSHIP AND POPULAR REVOLT

The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe. The first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in population all over Europe. In most countries, there were more seekers of jobs than employment. The population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums. Small producers in towns were often faced with stiff competition from imports of cheap machine-made goods from England, where industrialisation was more advanced than on the continent. This was especially so in textile production, which was carried out mainly in homes or small workshops and was only partly mechanised. In those regions of Europe where the aristocracy still enjoyed power, peasants struggled under the burden of feudal dues and obligations. The rise of food prices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in town and country.

The year 1848 was one such year. Food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads. Barricades were erected and Louis Philippe was forced to flee. A National Assembly proclaimed a Republic, granted suffrage to all adult males above 21, and guaranteed the right to work. National workshops to provide employment were set up.

Earlier, in 1845, weavers in Silesia had led a revolt against contractors who supplied the raw material and gave them orders for finished textiles but drastically reduced their payments. The journalist Wilhelm Wolff described the events in a Silesian village as follows:

In these villages (with 18,000 inhabitants) cotton weaving is the most widespread occupation … The misery of the workers is extreme. The desperate need for jobs has been taken advantage of by the contractors to reduce the prices of the goods they order….

On 4 June at 2 p.m. a large crowd of weavers emerged from their homes and marched in pairs up to the mansion of their contractor demanding higher wages. They were treated with scorn and threats alternately. Following this, a group of them forced their way into the house, smashed its elegant window- panes, furniture, porcelain … another group broke into the storehouse and plundered it of supplies of cloth which they tore to shreds … The contractor fled with his family to a neighboring village which, however, refused to shelter such a person. He returned 24 hours later having requisitioned the army. In the exchange that followed, eleven weavers were shot.

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK

1848: THE REVOLUTION OF THE LIBERALS

1848: THE REVOLUTION OF THE LIBERALS

Parallel to the revolts of the poor, unemployed and starving peasants and workers in many European countries in the year 1848, a revolution led by the educated middle classes was underway. Events of February 1848 in France had brought about the abdication of the monarch and a republic based on universal male suffrage had been proclaimed. In other parts of Europe where independent nation-states did not yet exist – such as Germany, Italy, Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire – men and women of the liberal middle classes combined their demands for constitutionalism with national unification. They took advantage of the growing popular unrest to push their demands for the creation of a nation-state on parliamentary principles – a constitution, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.

In the German regions, a large number of political associations whose members were middle-class professionals, businessmen and prosperous artisans came together in the city of 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 the German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament. When the deputies offered the crown on these terms to Friedrich Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he rejected it and joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly. While the opposition of the aristocracy and military became stronger, the social basis of parliament eroded. The parliament was dominated by the middle classes who resisted the demands of workers and artisans and consequently lost their support. In the end, troops were called in and the assembly was forced to disband.

The issue of extending political rights to women was a controversial one within the liberal movement, in which large numbers of women had participated actively over the years. Women had formed their own political associations, founded newspapers and taken part in political meetings and demonstrations. Despite this, they were denied suffrage rights during the election of the Assembly. When the Frankfurt parliament convened in the Church of St Paul, women were admitted only as observers to stand in the visitors’ gallery.

(Contemporary colour print. Notice the women in the upper left gallery)

Though conservative forces were able to suppress liberal movements in 1848, they 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. Hence, in the years after 1848, the autocratic monarchies of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce the changes that had already taken place in Western Europe before 1815. Thus serfdom and bonded labour were abolished both in the Habsburg dominions and in Russia. The Habsburg rulers granted more autonomy to the Hungarians in 1867.

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK

LIBERTY AND EQUALITY OF WOMEN

LIBERTY AND EQUALITY OF WOMEN

How were liberty and equality for women to be defined?

The liberal politician Carl Welcker, an elected member of the Frankfurt Parliament, expressed the following views:

‘Nature has created men and women to carry out different functions … Man, the stronger, the bolder and freer of the two, has been designated as protector of the family, its provider, meant for public tasks in the domain of law, production, defense. Woman, the weaker, dependent, and timid, requires the protection of man. Her sphere is the home, the care of the children, the nurturing of the family … Do we require any further proof that given such differences, equality between the sexes would only endanger harmony and destroy the dignity of the family?’

Louise Otto-Peters (1819-95) was a political activist who founded a women’s journal and subsequently a feminist political association. The first issue of her newspaper (21 April 1849) carried the following editorial:

‘Let us ask how many men, possessed by thoughts of living and dying for the sake of Liberty, would be prepared to fight for the freedom of the entire people, of all human beings? When asked this question, they would all too easily respond with a “Yes!”, though their untiring efforts are intended for the benefit of only one half of humanity – men. But Liberty is indivisible! Free men, therefore, must not tolerate being surrounded by the unfree …’

An anonymous reader of the same newspaper sent the following letter to the editor on 25 June 1850:

‘It is indeed ridiculous and unreasonable to deny women political rights even though they enjoy the right to property which they make use of. They perform functions and assume responsibilities without however getting the benefits that accrue to men for the same … Why this injustice? Is it not a disgrace that even the stupidest cattle-herder possesses the right to vote, simply because he is a man, whereas highly talented women owning considerable property are excluded from this right, even though they contribute so much to the maintenance of the state?’

Discuss

Compare the positions on the question of women’s rights voiced by the three writers cited above. What do they reveal about liberal ideology?

Source: This topic is taken from NCERT TEXTBOOK