Nationalism Dbq Analysis

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Nationalism on the European continent during the nineteenth century created both stronger governments and new resistances within the Great Powers. Founded in the ideas of unification under a common ethnicity and a common state, nationalism was a cause for revolution and oppression. Greece and Italy were examples of nations that used nationalism to fuel revolutions in order to break away from their respective parent nations. Because of the threat of revolution, nations such as Russia and Austria, whose borders encompassed a variety of different cultures, dedicated themselves to fighting the spread of nationalism out of fear of revolution from regions within their own countries. However, in a nation such as Prussia, the nationalist spirit assisted …show more content…
The mix of ethnicities rendered states unable to unite their populations, leaving the state with no “national character” and causing nationalism to promote leaving the overarching state (doc. 1). The words of Herder, appealed to the minority groups within states like Austria because they validated their desire to maintain their non-German heritage. Within the Kingdom of Bohemia, the native Czech population did not view itself as part of Austria rather as part of a distinct Czech state (doc.4). Nationalism caused the divide between the different nationalities of Austria to worsen, thus destabilizing the state, reducing its power as a whole …show more content…
The range of ethnicities within Austria paralleled to the Russia’s ethnic situation. Because of the size of the Russian Empire, connected by the Trans-Siberian Railroad upon its completion in 1904, controlling the numerous ethnic groups became a challenge. Within the Russian Empire, there was the entire kingdom of Poland, which accounted for a Polish population, as well as other ethnic groups that comprised the Russian population which included the Turkish, Finnish, and Lithuanians. Russia faced a revolution from the Kingdom of Poland in 1830, as Austria experienced a revolution in Hungary in 1848. In having a large empire with no national uniting force, countries such as Russia and Austria faced opposition from their minorities who rallied behind the ideas of nationalism. The nationalist ideology introduced to Europe had the potential to break or strengthen the government and culture of individual nations. Culture and ethnicity defined the populations of Europe and these definitions allowed for both revolution and unification to be present during the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth