Romantic Imagination and National Feeling Class 10 History Chapter 1 Notes | Part 4

Easy and Quick Notes

Chapter – 1: Rise of Nationalism in Europe

Part – 4

The Romantic Imagination and National Feeling

• Nationalism did not come about only through wars and territorial expansion.
• Culture played an important role in creating the idea of the nation.

Romanticism

• A cultural movement in which art, poetry, music, stories, etc. were promoted to shape the nationalist feeling.

Romantic artists

• Criticised the glorification of reason and science.
• Focused on emotions, intuitions, and mystical feelings.

Effects of Romantic artists

• Created a sense of a shared collective heritage — a common cultural past as the basis of nation.
• They emphasised on vernacular language and collection of local folklore to recover an ancient national spirit and to carry the modern nationalist message to large audiences who were mostly illiterate.

Poland

• Poland had been partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century by the Great Powers: Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
• In 1831, an armed rebellion against Russian rule took place.
• This was ultimately crushed.
• After the revolt, many members of clergy in Poland began to use Polish language as a weapon of national resistance.
• Use of Polish came to be seen as a symbol of struggle against Russian dominance.

Hunger, Hardship and Popular Revolt

• The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe.
• Enormous increase in population.
• There were more job seekers than employment.
• In 1848, food shortages and widespread unemployment brought the population of Paris out on the roads.
• Louis Philippe was forced to flee.
• National Assembly proclaimed France as a Republic.
• Suffrage was granted to all adult males above 21.
• Guaranteed the right to work.

National workshops to provide employment were set up.

• In 1845, weavers of Silesia had led a revolt against contractors.
• The contractors gave them orders and for finished textiles and supply them raw materials.
• The contractors drastically reduced their payments.

1848: The Revolution of the Liberals

• The Revolution of 1848 was led by educated middle class.
• They demanded constitutionalism with national unification.
• They wanted to create nation-state on parliamentary principles — a constitution, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.

Frankfurt Parliament

• In Germany, professionals, businessmen, artisans decided to vote for all German National Assembly.
• Frankfurt Parliament organised in Church of St. Paul.
• It had 831 elected representatives.
• They drafted a constitution.
• Germany to be headed by a monarchy subject to a Parliament (constitutional monarchy).
• When offered crown, Frederick Wilhelm IV, King of Prussia, he rejected it.
• He joined other monarchs to oppose the elected assembly.
• The Parliament was dominated by the middle classes who resisted the demands of workers and artisans.
• So, they lost their support.
• Troops called and the assembly was forced to disband.
• Women also played active roles in liberal movement, though they were denied political rights.

Conservative forces suppressed liberal movements in 1848. But they could not restore the old order.

• In the years after 1848, the monarchs of Central and Eastern Europe began to introduce changes.
• Serfdom and bonded labour were abolished.