Nationalism is an intense type of patriotism or loyalty to 1’s nation. On the whole, nationalists exaggerate the standing, worth or significance of their nation and place its pursuits above these of different international locations. This sentiment was distinguished in early twentieth century Europe, significantly throughout the so-called Nice Powers (Britain, France and Germany) and led many Europeans to consider their nation occupied a place of cultural, financial and navy supremacy.
Sources of nationalism
The rising nationalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries got here from many sources. A very good deal sprang from historic occasions and developments. In Britain, the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century had created outstanding technological change and created new types of wealth, whereas the British Empire had grown to span one-quarter of the globe. France and Germany additionally skilled speedy financial transformation, imperial development and social modernisation.
Nationwide successes of this sort led to extreme pleasure and confidence which, in flip, gave rise to nationalist sentiment. Politicians, diplomats and a few royal leaders contributed to this of their remarks and rhetoric. Nationalism was additionally fueled by one-sided press reporting that was excessively important of different nations however not often important of 1’s personal.
Nationalist concepts had been additionally perpetuated and superior by widespread tradition – from the excessive artwork of painters and sculptures all the way down to widespread types of leisure like low-cost literature and music corridor comedy. Music, whether or not in orchestral or tune type, was a notable medium of nationalist sentiment.
Inflated confidence
The product of this brewing nationalism was an inflated confidence in a single’s nation, authorities and navy energy. In issues of overseas affairs or international competitors, many grew to become satisfied that their nation was honest, righteous and with out fault or blame.
In distinction, nationalists demonised rival nations, caricaturing them as aggressive, scheming, deceitful, backward or uncivilised. Nationalist press stories satisfied many who the pursuits of their nation had been threatened by the plotting, scheming and hungry imperialism of its rivals. Nationalist and militarist rhetoric assured Europeans that if struggle did erupt, their nation would emerge victorious.
In live performance with its harmful brothers, imperialism and militarism, nationalism contributed to a continental delusion that struggle was not solely justified, it was simply winnable. In its most excessive type, this aggressive patriotism was generally known as ‘jingoism’, taking its title from a British music corridor tune of the 1870s:
We don’t need to struggle however by Jingo, if we do
We’ve acquired the ships, we’ve acquired the boys, we’ve acquired the cash too
We’ve fought the Bear earlier than, and whereas we’re Britons true
The Russians shall not have Constantinople!
Europe’s ambivalence to struggle
By the beginning of the twentieth century, many Europeans appeared detached to the risks of struggle. This was partly attributable to their lack of publicity to it. Other than the Crimean Warfare (1853-56) and the Franco-Prussian Warfare (1870-71), the second-half of the 1800s was a century of comparative peace in Europe. Excluding France, which was defeated by the Prussians in 1871, the Nice Powers had not skilled a big navy defeat for not less than two generations.
For many Europeans, struggle was a distant reminiscence. The British and French had fought colonial wars in Africa and Asia however they had been transient conflicts in opposition to disorganised and under-equipped opponents in faraway locations. Militarism and nationalism revived the prospects of a European struggle and created naivete and overconfidence about its probably outcomes.
Nationalism additionally bred some delusion concerning the navy capability of the Nice Powers. The British believed their naval energy, supported by the financial may of the Empire, supplied them the higher hand in any struggle. German leaders positioned nice religion in Prussian navy effectivity, Germany’s rising industrial base, new armaments and her increasing fleet of battleships and U-boats (submarines). If struggle erupted, the German excessive command had supreme confidence within the Schlieffen Plan, a preemptive navy technique for defeating France earlier than Russia may mobilise to assist her.
In Russia, the tsar believed his empire was sustained by God and guarded by an enormous standing military of 1.5 million males, the biggest peacetime land pressure in Europe. Russian commanders believed the nation’s monumental inhabitants gave it the whip hand over the smaller nations of western Europe. The French positioned their religion within the nation’s industries and defences, significantly a wall of concrete limitations and fortresses operating the size of its japanese border.
Stereotypes and ‘invasion literature’

By the late 1800s, some Europeans had been virtually drunk with patriotism and nationalism. Britain, to deal with one instance, had loved two centuries of imperial, business and naval dominance. Britain’s empire spanned one-quarter of the globe and the lyrics of the favored patriotic tune Rule, Britannia! trumpeted that “Britons by no means by no means shall be slaves”.
London had spent the nineteenth century advancing her imperial and business pursuits and avoiding wars – nevertheless, the unification of Germany, the velocity of German armament and the bellicose ambitions of Kaiser Wilhelm II induced concern for British nationalists. England’s ‘penny press’ – a collective time period for affordable, serialised novels – intensified overseas rivalries by publishing unimaginable fictions about overseas intrigues, espionage, future struggle and invasion. The Battle of Dorking (1871), one of many best-known examples of ‘invasion literature’, was a wild story concerning the occupation of England by German forces.
By 1910, a Londoner may purchase dozens of tawdry novellas warning of German, Russian or French aggression. This invasion literature usually employed racial stereotypes or innuendo. The German, for instance, was normally depicted as chilly, impassive and calculating; the Russian was an uncultured barbarian, given to wanton violence; the Frenchman was a leisure-seeking layabout; the Chinese language a race of murderous, opium-smoking savages.
Penny novelists, cartoonists and satirists additionally mocked the rulers of those international locations. The German Kaiser and the Russian Tsar, each of whom had been frequent targets, had been ridiculed for his or her vanity, ambition or megalomania.
German nationalism
German nationalism and xenophobia had been no much less intense, although they took totally different types. In contrast to Britain, Germany was a relatively younger nation, shaped in 1871 after the unification of 26 German-speaking states and territories. The assumption that each one German-speaking peoples needs to be united in a single empire, or ‘Pan-Germanism’, was the political glue that sure these states collectively.
The leaders of post-1871 Germany relied on nationalist sentiment to consolidate the brand new nation and acquire public assist. German tradition – from the poetry of Goethe to the music of Richard Wagner – was promoted and celebrated. German nationalism was additionally underpinned by German militarism: the power of the nation was sustained by the power of its navy forces.
The brand new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, grew to become the personification of this new, nationalistic Germany. Each the Kaiser and his nation had been younger and impressive, obsessive about navy energy and imperial growth. The Kaiser was happy with Germany’s achievements however nervous about its future. He was envious of different powers and determined for nationwide success.
To the Kaiser, and to many different Germans, Britain was the principle impediment to German progress and growth. Wilhelm was envious of Britain’s huge empire, business enterprise and naval energy – however he thought the British avaricious and hypocritical. The British authorities oversaw the world’s largest empire but manoeuvred in opposition to German colonial growth in Africa and Asia.
As a consequence, Britain grew to become a well-liked goal within the pre-war German press, painted as expansionist, egocentric, grasping and obsessive about cash. Anti-British sentiment intensified in the course of the Boer Warfare of 1899-1902, Britain’s struggle in opposition to farmer-settlers for management of South Africa.
Independence actions

Because the Nice Powers beat their chests and rode this wave of self-righteousness and superiority, a second kind of nationalism was on the rise in southern and japanese Europe. This nationalism was not about supremacy or empire however the correct of ethnic teams to independence, autonomy and self-government.
With the world divided into massive empires and spheres of affect, many areas, races and non secular teams sought freedom from their imperial masters. In Russia, greater than 80 ethnic teams in japanese Europe and Asia had been compelled to talk the Russian language, worship the Russian tsar and follow the Russian Orthodox faith.
For a lot of the nineteenth century, China had been ‘carved up’ and economically exploited by European powers; resentful Chinese language shaped secret and exiled nationalist teams to rid their nation of overseas affect. Nationalist teams contributed to the weakening of the Ottoman Empire in japanese Europe, by looking for to throw off Muslim rule.
Serbian nationalism
No nationalist motion had a larger influence on the outbreak of struggle than Slavic teams within the Balkans. Pan-Slavism, the idea that the Slavic peoples of japanese Europe ought to have their very own nation, was a strong pressure within the area.
Slavic nationalism was strongest in Serbia, the place it had risen considerably within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pan-Slavism was significantly against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its management and affect over the area. Aggravated by Vienna’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, younger Serbs joined radical nationalist teams just like the ‘Black Hand’ (Crna Ruka). These teams hoped to drive Austria-Hungary from the Balkans and set up a ‘Higher Serbia’, a unified state for all Slavic individuals.
It was this pan-Slavic nationalism that impressed the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914, an occasion that led on to the outbreak of World Warfare I.
“A brand new and aggressive nationalism, totally different from its predecessors, emerged in Europe on the finish of the nineteenth century… The brand new nationalism engaged the fierce us/them group feelings – loyalty inwards, aggression outwards – that characterise human relations at less complicated sociological ranges, just like the household or the tribe. What was new was attaching these passions to the nation… In its outward-looking dimension, the brand new nationalism was totally a motion of the ‘age of imperialism’ – of the ‘nice recreation’, the ‘scramble for Africa’, the enterprise of nice powers.”
Lawrence Rosenthal, historian
1. Nationalism was an intense type of patriotism. These with nationalist tendencies celebrated the tradition and achievements of their very own nation and positioned its pursuits above these of different nations.
2. Pre-war nationalism was fuelled by wars, imperial conquests and rivalry, political rhetoric, newspapers and widespread tradition, equivalent to ‘invasion literature’ written by penny press novelists.
3. British nationalism was fuelled by a century of comparative peace and prosperity. The British Empire had flourished and expanded, its naval power had grown and Britons had identified solely colonial wars.
4. German nationalism was a brand new phenomenon, rising from the unification of Germany in 1871. It grew to become fascinated with German imperial growth (securing Germany’s ‘place within the solar’) and resentful of the British and their empire.
5. Rising nationalism was additionally an element within the Balkans, the place Slavic Serbs and others sought independence and autonomy from the political domination of Austria-Hungary.
Quotation info
Title: ‘Nationalism as a reason behind World Warfare I’
Authors: Jim Southey, Steve Thompson
Writer: Alpha Historical past
URL: https://alphahistory.com/worldwar1/nationalism/
Date revealed: April 5, 2017
Date up to date: December 20, 2023
Date accessed: September 14, 2024
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