The Importance Of Nationalism

Nationalism: The Foundation or Ruination of Empires

Nationalism is more than just a sense of pride in one’s country. Nationalism is what makes you feel like part of something bigger. In order to be a nation, its people should willingly make sacrifices to benefit the country, not just the individual. Many factors like common culture, language, geographic location, and shared history are all important contributors to nationalism. Nationalism can possess great power, that is capable of either uniting or dividing nations. As nationalism flourished in Europe during the 1800’s, it unified separate Italian and German city-states, and divided previously great powers like the Ottoman Empire and Austrian Empire.

Following the Napoleonic

The Ottoman Empire was nicknamed “The Sick Man of Europe” because it had been in decline since the 1600’s. It was in decline because it consisted of poor farmers who could not compete with, or participate in industrialization. When Germany unified, the Austrian Empire lost most of its industrial power. They were left with agricultural and natural resources, but nowhere to manufacture and market products. Politics were also similar in the Ottoman, and Austrian Empires. Both empires were ruled by an absolute monarchy. Historically, people were usually unsatisfied under an absolute monarchy; possibly because of their lack of representation and involvement in the government. The Young Turks was a nationalist group formed in the Ottoman Empire. Their mission was to fight the absolute power of the sultan and obtain liberal reforms. They saw that it was wrong for one person to rule over such a huge mass of land. Like many others, nationalism gave them the idea of having their own independent nation where they could make their own rules. People realized it would be better to have smaller, but more successful independent nations. In the Austrian Empire, Emperor Franz Josef I outlawed liberal reforms. Even though he could stop the people from taking action, there was no way to stop the feeling of nationalism. After people saw how nationalism led

The Austrian Empire was comprised of Germans, Magyars, Slovenes, Poles, Romanians, and even more ethnic groups. The Ottoman Empire’s various ethnic groups included Greeks, Turks, kurds, Arabs, and Jews. In both empires these different ethnic groups all had significantly unique cultures. It was easy for ethnic minorities to feel lost in such a huge empire. Different religions and languages created barriers between groups. In both empires, there was ethnic tension, because each group wanted to be an independent nation. Greece had become an independent country and Serbia was also self- ruled. The Ottoman Empire was losing its land to ethnic groups establishing their own countries. It is not impossible for different nationalities to live together peacefully, but at this time they did not have the technology we have today to communicate and integrate different cultural ideas. These empires showed that there can be such thing as too much land with too many people to control under one ruling. With such a huge empire that included so many ethnic groups, nationalist uprisings seemed inevitable. Nationalistic feelings among all these different ethnic groups was a primary reason for the downfall of the Ottoman, and Austrian