By Lynne Ann Hartnett, Villanova University
Identifying the history of a nation is a subjective process. National and royal academies, museums, and university history departments selectively culled the history that was to be representative of a people. British historian John Hutchinson says that these ‘historians’ were themselves the ‘map-makers of collective identity’. This involved creating new symbols and practices that seemed to tie a nation’s people to their imagined past.
Symbols and Practices for Nationalism
The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm illustrates how crafted the process of creating an imaginary past was, in the book The Invention of Tradition. The rising tide of nationalism was so unprecedented, Hobsbawm argues, “That even historic continuity had to be invented, for example by creating an ancient past beyond effective historical continuity either by semi-fiction or forgery.”
Religion inspired this ritualistic use of symbols and practices. Images of religious figures had long evoked reverence, symbolizing belief and identity without language. Now, nationalism crafted modern secular versions. National flags and images like Marianne, Germania, John Bull, and Uncle Sam became shorthand to convey commonality, identity, and unity.
Similarly, church hymns were important for signifying religious belief and inspiration but even more for the sense of commonality and unity that singing together in public inspired in a church community. National anthems had precisely the same effect. Sharing patriotic refrains among people who were strangers tied members of a nation together in common experience and destiny.
This article comes directly from content in the video series The Great Revolutions of Modern History. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Rise of National Anthems and Monuments
In Great Britain, the royal anthem ‘God Save the King’ came into popular favor in the 18th century, as King George II faced an attack from the forces of a dynastic pretender. But singing it as a national anthem became standard fare only in the 19th century, during the age of rising nationalism. Russia closely followed suit with ‘God Save the Tsar’ in 1833.
However, rather than locating the source of the nation’s power and identity in its people, these early anthems established an explicit connection between the monarch and the nation, even in a multi-national empire such as Russia.
Visual mechanisms also came into play. Governments built monuments to honor a nation’s past. Given the outsize influence of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in the development of nationalism, it should come as no surprise that these conflicts—and the sacrifices they extracted—were in marble in public squares on both sides of the fight.
The monuments built during this era glorified the nation and the sacrifices of the people on its behalf.
Agitational Political Nationalism
However, in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, Europe was still a collection of dynastic, multi-national states rather than nation states. The Habsburgs, Bourbons, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns all ruled over conglomerations of peoples who spoke a variety of languages, professed a number of different faiths, and clung to diverse arrays of traditions and customs.
Although these ruling dynasties did their best to adopt nationalism as a state creed—and essentially nationalize their populations—some ethnic groups within their dominions sought to create nations of their own. Poles, Greeks, Serbians, Italians, and Belgians aspired to gather those people who shared their language and culture to create autonomous nation-states.
One of the most important figures in the development of agitational political nationalism was the Italian activist Giuseppe Mazzini. Born in Genoa, which was then part of Napoleon’s empire, Mazzini grew up resenting what he considered to be the humiliation of foreign rule. The Italian states experienced a period of emancipation from the Austrians when war broke out between Austria and France in the 1790s, but this was short-lived.
Napoleon divided the peninsula. He became titular head of an entity known as the Kingdom of Italy and set up a relative to rule as titular leader of its neighbor, the Kingdom of Naples. Napoleon’s fall in 1815 didn’t improve the Italian states’ fortunes.
Giuseppe Mazzini
The Congress of Vienna apportioned much of the Italian peninsula among the Austrian Hapsburgs, the Spanish Bourbon dynasty, and the papacy.
At the same time, the restructuring elicited an angry response among political nationalists such as Mazzini. Secret revolutionary societies bent on achieving independence from foreign rule—and more personal liberty—sprang up in many of the Italian states. These secret societies were known as Carbonari, or charcoal burners; and Giuseppe Mazzini became a member.
The Carbonari soon initiated a rebellion against the pope’s temporal power—meaning the authority the pope attempted to exercise outside of spiritual affairs. And provisional governments were formed in Parma, Modena, and the Papal States. But the uprising lacked cohesion. Austrian troops quickly suppressed the rebellion and executed its leaders.
Mazzini was already in exile after an earlier arrest, so he avoided execution. Now, he and a few dozen other exiles founded an organization called Young Italy whose mission was to unify the Italian peninsula and achieve self-determination for all peoples of Europe. For the next decade, Mazzini’s attempts at unification—known as the Risorgimento, or resurgence—failed, even as he remained optimistic.
Imaginary Nations
In spite of certain claims about the natural, organic qualities of nations and the nation-states they produce, such claims are in reality an abstraction. They are—to use Benedict Anderson’s terminology— imagined. Their history and traditions—to quote Hobsbawm— are invented. Writers, poets, historians, and statesmen crafted nations to suit their purposes. Then, nationalism was used to reorient people’s identity and loyalties to the nation.
Today, amid a resurgence in nationalist sentiments around the world—as societies struggle with demographic change and globalization—it seems especially important to recall nationalism’s history.
Common Questions about Nationalism and the History of a Nation
Hobsbawm believed that the rising tide of nationalism was so unprecedented that there had been a need to tie a nation’s people to their imagined past. He argued, “…even historic continuity had to be invented, for example by creating an ancient past beyond effective historical continuity either by semi-fiction or forgery.”
The early national anthems were created on the belief that sharing patriotic refrains among people who were strangers tied members of a nation together in common experience and destiny. However, rather than locating the source of the nation’s power and identity in its people, the early anthems, like ‘God Save the King‘, established an explicit connection between the monarch and the nation.
The mission of the the group called Young Italy was to unify the Italian peninsula and achieve self-determination for all peoples of Europe.
