Abstract
Let us now turn from the conceptual and historiographical to the history of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One of the distinctive features of this period of European history was the transformation of nationalism into a mass phenomenon. As mentioned in the last chapter, in the early nineteenth century (at least before the revolutions of the 1840s) nationalism had in large part been the preserve of the educated middle classes. It was not until the last third of the century that the concept of the nation — with its constitutive notions of cultural authenticity, historicist growth and political self-determination — began to capture the imagination of the wider public and became a key mobilising force in the modern political arena. It was during this period of European history that nations became mass communities affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people. If we wish to explain why both in 1914 and then again during the inter-war period, national solidarities proved on the whole superior to class solidarities, then part of the answer has to be sought in this transformation. This chapter discusses some of the causes and consequences of this transition, focusing mainly on western and central Europe. In the next chapter the focus will shift towards an exploration of anti-imperialist and (after the First World War) state-building nationalism in east-central Europe.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Select Bibliography
Wolfgang Altgeld, ‘Religion, Denomination and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), Protestants, Catholics and Jews in Germany, 1800–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 2001), pp. 49–66.
*Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
Celia Applegate, ‘A Europe of Regions: Reflections on the Historiography of Sub-National Places in Modern Times’, American Historical Review, 104 (Oct 1999), pp. 1157–182.
Jay W. Baird, To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 41–72.
Stefan Berger, Mark Donovan and Kevin Passmore (eds), Writing National Histories: Western Europe since1800 (London/New York: Routledge, 1999).
Volker Berghahn, Imperial Germany, 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture and Politics (Oxford/Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1994).
*John Breuilly, ‘Nationalism and the History of Ideas’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 105 (2000), pp. 187–223.
John Breuilly (ed.), 19th-century Germany: Politics, Culture and Society, 1780–1918 (London: Arnold, 2001).
*Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
*Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC/London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton University Press, 1994).
Dieter Düding et al. (eds), Öffentliche Festkultur: Politische Feste in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988).
*Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton University Press, 1993).
Alain Forrest, ‘Federalism’, in Colin Lucas (ed.), The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 309–27.
Etienne François et al. (eds), Nation und Emotion: Deutschland und Frankreich im Vergleich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995).
*Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, vol. 2 of A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism (Cambridge: Polity, 1985), chs. 4 and 8.
Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders: Europe, 1800–1914, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, 1996).
*John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton University Press, 1994).
Raoul Girardet (ed.), Le Nationalism français, 1871–1914 (Paris: A. Colin, 1966).
Svenja Goltermann, Körper der Nation: Habitusformierung und die Politik des Turnens, 1860–1890 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).
Wolfgang Hardtwig, ‘Geschichtsinteresse, Geschichtsbilder und politische Symbole in der Reichsgründungsära und im Kaiserreich’, in E. Mai and S. Waetzoldt (eds), Kunstverwaltung, Bau- und Denkmal-Politik im Kaiserreich (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 1981).
Pierre-Jakez Héliaz, The Horse of Pride: Life in a Breton Village (London/New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1978).
*Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–1914 (London: Abacus, 1987).
Michael Jeismann, Das Vaterland der Feinde: Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1792–1918 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1992).
D. Langewiesche and G. Schmidt (eds), Föderative Nation (Berlin: Oldenbourg, 2001).
* James R. Lehning, Peasants and French: Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, vol. II: The Rise of Classes and Nation-states, 1760–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), chs. 3, 7, 20.
Patricia Mazón, ‘Germania Triumphant: The Niederwald National Monument and the Liberal Moment in Imperial Germany’, German History, 8/2 (2000), pp. 162–92.
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics, 1890–1920 (Chicago University Press, 1984).
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘The Varieties of the Nation State in Modern History: Liberal, Imperialist, Fascist and Contemporary Notions of Nation and Nationality’, in M. Mann (ed.), The Rise and Decline of the Nation State (Oxford, 1990), pp. 210–26.
*George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford University Press, 1990).
*George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich, new edn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, 1866–1918, vols. 1 and 2 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1998).
*Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, under the direction of Pierre Nora, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996–8).
James Retallack, Germany in the Age of Kaiser Wilhelm II (Basingstoke: Macmillan — now Palgrave Macmillan, 1996).
James Retallack (ed.), Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830–1933 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
Daniel J. Sherman, ‘Art, Commerce, and the Production of Memory in France after World War I’, in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 186–211.
Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton University Press, 1975).
Robert Tombs, France, 1814–1914 (London: Longman, 1996).
Maiken Umbach (ed.), German Federalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
Jakob Vogel, Nationen im Gleichschritt: Der Kult der ‘Nation in Waffen’ in Deutschland und Frankreich, 1871–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995).
*Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France (Stanford University Press, 1976).
Eugen Weber, My France: Politics, Culture, Myth (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1991).
Eugen Weber, ‘What Rough Beast?’, Critical Review, 10/2 (Spring 1996), pp. 285–98.
Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995).
Michael Winock, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism and Fascism in France (Stanford University Press, 1998).
Oliver Zimmer, ‘Competing Memories of the Nation: Liberal Historians and the Reconstruction of the Swiss Past’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), pp. 194–226.
Copyright information
© 2003 Oliver Zimmer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zimmer, O. (2003). Towards the Mass Nation: Nationalism, Commemoration and Regionalism. In: Nationalism in Europe, 1890–1940. Studies in European History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-4388-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4039-4388-0_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-94720-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4039-4388-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)