The making of Germany and Italy

Detail

The turn after 1848

• After 1848 nationalism shed its link with democracy and revolution. Before this, liberals and nationalists worked together. After 1848, conservative rulers took over the national idea and used it to build state power.
• Conservatives learned the lesson of 1848: if they led the nation-making themselves, they could unify the country without giving up monarchy or losing land to revolutionaries.
• Method changed too. Unification now came from armies, diplomacy and treaties, not from street barricades and popular assemblies.

Germany — 'can the army be the architect of a nation?'

• The 1848 liberal initiative — a middle-class attempt to build a united Germany with an elected parliament — was crushed by three forces acting together:
• the monarchy (the kings, who refused to take a crown from the people),
• the military,

• the Junkers — the large landowners of Prussia, a powerful noble class.

• Friedrich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia, refused the crown offered by the Frankfurt Parliament in 1848. That ended the liberal road to unity.

• Prussia then took charge of unification. Its chief minister Otto von Bismarck was the architect, and his tools were the Prussian army and bureaucracy (the trained officials who ran the state).
• Bismarck won three wars in seven years — against Denmark, Austria and France.
• Prussia beat Denmark in 1864. [2]
• It beat Austria in the Seven Weeks' War of 1866. [2]

• It beat France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. [2]

• 18 January 1871 — in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, Kaiser William I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor.

• The ceremony took place at the Prussian military headquarters at Versailles, inside conquered France, while Prussian guns were shelling Paris. [2]

• Britannica notes the new Germany was made by "cabinet diplomacy and war", not by a strong popular nationalist wave — which matches the NCERT point that nationalism had passed into conservative hands. [2]

• Nation-building after 1871. The new German Reich modernised currency, banking, legal and judicial systems — all on Prussian models. One state's rules became the whole nation's rules.

• Bismarck went on to serve as chancellor of the Empire for 19 years. [2]

Exam framing: Germany was unified top-down — army first, people later. Hence the question in the NCERT text: can the army be the architect of a nation?

Italy before unification — seven states

• Italy in the mid-19th century was seven states, not one country.
• The north was under Austrian Habsburg control.
• The centre was ruled by the Pope (the Papal States).
• The south was under the Bourbon kings of Spain.

• Only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house — the house of Savoy.

• Even the language was not shared. Italian existed in many regional dialects, so a common national speech did not yet exist.

Mazzini — the failed revolutionary phase

• Giuseppe Mazzini began in the secret society Carbonari.
• He founded Young Italy at Marseilles and Young Europe at Berne — societies of young men committed to republics.
• His revolutionary risings failed in 1831 and 1848. After that, the job of unification passed from the republicans to the monarchy of Sardinia-Piedmont under Victor Emmanuel II.

Cavour — diplomacy, not revolution

• Count Camillo di Cavour, chief minister of Sardinia-Piedmont, was "neither a revolutionary nor a democrat".
• He belonged to the rich, French-speaking upper class — he spoke French better than Italian. This shows how far the leadership was from the ordinary Italian peasant.
• Cavour's weapon was diplomacy: he built a tactical alliance with France, and with French help defeated Austria in 1859.
• Later, Cavour acted to keep control of the movement. Fearing the Risorgimento was becoming a popular radical movement under Garibaldi, and fearing French intervention if Rome were attacked, he sent Piedmontese troops into the papal lands of Umbria and the Marche to join Garibaldi at Naples. [3]

Garibaldi and the Expedition of the Thousand, 1860

• Giuseppe Garibaldi led armed volunteers into the south. His force is remembered as the Red Shirts — about 30,000 men, backed by peasant support.
• The campaign is called the Expedition of the Thousand (1860); it overthrew the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples) and joined the south and Sicily to the north. [3]
• Key dates:
• Night of 5–6 May 1860 — Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, with over 1,000 volunteers. [3]
• 11 May 1860 — landed at Marsala in Sicily. [3]
• 6 June 1860 — captured Palermo, though the enemy had more than 20,000 Neapolitan troops. [3]
• 20 July 1860 — held all Sicily except Messina. [3]
• 19 August 1860 — crossed the Strait of Messina to the mainland; 7 September 1860 — entered Naples. [3]

• 26 October 1860 — met Victor Emmanuel II on Neapolitan soil and hailed him "king of Italy". [3]

• Garibaldi accepted a king although he leaned towards democratic ideas — for him, unity mattered more than the form of government. [3]

1861 and 1870 — completing Italy

• 1861 — Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed king of united Italy. The Kingdom of Italy was declared on 17 March 1861 by a parliament meeting at Turin. [3]
• Rome joined only in 1870. France had kept troops guarding the Papal States; when France withdrew, Rome became part of Italy and later the capital.

The elite character of Italian unification

• Unification was made by kings, ministers and armies — most ordinary Italians took no part.
• The proof used in NCERT: southern peasants thought 'La Talia' (Italia) was the name of Victor Emmanuel's wife. They did not know what "Italy" meant.
• So the state came first, and the feeling of being "Italian" had to be built afterwards.

Prelims Hooks

• Junkers = large landowners of Prussia; they crushed the 1848 liberal move with the monarchy and army.
• Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused the crown offered by the Frankfurt Parliament, 1848.
• Bismarck's three wars in seven years: Denmark (1864), Austria — Seven Weeks' War (1866), France (1870–71). [2]
• 18 January 1871, Hall of Mirrors, Versailles — Kaiser William I proclaimed German Emperor.
• German Reich standardised currency, banking, legal and judicial systems on Prussian models.
• Before unification Italy had seven states; only Sardinia-Piedmont had an Italian ruling house.
• Mazzini: Carbonari → Young Italy (Marseilles), Young Europe (Berne); risings failed 1831, 1848.
• Cavour spoke French better than Italian; French alliance defeated Austria in 1859.
• Expedition of the Thousand sailed from Quarto near Genoa on 5–6 May 1860 and landed at Marsala, Sicily, on 11 May 1860. [3]
• Kingdom of Italy proclaimed 17 March 1861 at Turin, Victor Emmanuel II king; Rome added 1870. [3]

Mains Points

• Nationalism changed sides after 1848. Before, it was a liberal-democratic demand; after, it became a conservative tool of state-building. Germany and Italy are the two test cases — both unified by monarchy, army and diplomacy, not by popular revolution. Link this to the later slide from nationalism to aggressive imperialism after 1871.
• "Can the army be the architect of a nation?" German unification was achieved through cabinet diplomacy and war rather than mass nationalist feeling [2]. This militarised birth explains the dominance of Prussian institutions, the Junkers and the officer corps in the Reich — a structural weakness carried into 1914.
• Two models inside one story. Italy shows a mix: Cavour's diplomacy from above and Garibaldi's armed popular campaign from below. Cavour's move into Umbria and the Marche was designed to stop the movement turning radical [3] — the monarchy absorbed the revolution rather than yielding to it.
• A state before a nation. Southern peasants thinking 'La Talia' was the king's wife shows unification was an elite project. Useful for arguing that nation-making is a cultural task that continues after political unity — connects to language, schooling, and the use of symbols and female allegories (Germania, Marianne).