Essay On Nationalism In Italy And Germany

The most popular definition for nationalism is a love or loyalty to one’s country, but it is made up of much more. Nationalism is felt by large groups of people who have a common culture. They all experience the same religion, language and history and share a territory. These people often feel that their nation is better, and better off as an autonomous state that rules itself, and they might be willing to go to many extremes to achieve this. This nationalism has affected Italy and Germany as well as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. In these countries, nationalism was either a unifying or a dividing factor that affected these countries in positive or negative ways. Both Italy and Germany were originally divided into separate states. In Italy, the men who worked to unify all the states together were …show more content…
Austria-Hungary was made up of people with many different nationalities. There were Slavs, Hungarians, Italians, Serbs and Croats. Each one of these people believed that they should rule themselves. Nationalism spurred revolts against the government in 1848. The emperor at this time, Francis Joseph, tried to satisfy these nationalists by allowing small reforms, but he did not succeed since many of the ethnic groups were not happy. In 1866, Austria-Hungary split into two states. These two states had its own parliament and constitution, but they were both ruled by the same person. Nationalism began to keep the government from acknowledging certain political and social complications and split up Austria-Hungary. Nationalism also negatively affected the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire ruled many ethnic groups, like Austria-Hungary. This created the same problem of the groups rising and revolting because they each wanted their separate states, like the nationalistic movement “young Turks” in 1908. The empire divided as it grew weaker and