Industrialization and Ideologies 3: Blood and Iron

3.3: Blood and Iron--Nationalism

Perhaps the single most important modern ideology has been nationalism. The French Revolution not only began the process of overturning the dominant cultural importance of aristocracy and the church, it also created a new idea to replace them. Nationalism is the belief that humans have a natural, organic community that is defined by shared history, culture, and (usually) biology. The “Nation” comes to represent a larger, more powerful communal identity. In an age of increasingly democratic politics, people feel a great sense of allegiance to and identification with the nation.

One aspect of nationalism is its insistence that nations (a cultural community) require their own nation-state (a political entity). During the nineteenth century, European wars usually reflected this drive toward nation-statehood. The two greatest wars of national liberation/unification were those of the Germans and the Italians.

Reader pages 177-186

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