Hi, welcome back. This week, we're going to talk about the rise of the nation state in the middle of the 1800s. And all of you have grown up with nation states as the natural form of political organization, but it was not always so. Let's just kind of take a moment to remember what things were like in the traditional world. Remember that in the traditional world, life is extremely local. Remember how hard it was for people to travel over land, so that the radius of the average life would be lived out in a circle, perhaps, no more than 30 to 50 miles wide and that would have been true for the overwhelming majority of people, so extremely local. So had people identified themselves, mainly around the land, the characteristic crops they grew with a kind of livestock they raised. They tended to think of themselves as part of a locality often with a very local language. Their main unit of identification was a family or clan or tribe and then there were distant lords and by distance that might have been a lord who lived as much as 50 miles away. What this also meant was very local languages. Oh say a country like today's France. There might have been dozens of different languages spoken there hundreds of years ago. Even by the year 1870 in France, we're talking here about one of the most developed nation states in the entire world in 1870. Even in 1870, recruit's into the French army half of them did not speak French as their native language. They spoke a whole bunch of different languages some of which are languages that today do not even exist. In the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France, there was a local language there which now you can't find being spoken at all. So, traditional world extremely local; local languages, local identities. Now think about how that's changing as you're getting into the middle part of the 1800s. Think about your communities now dislocated as a lot of people are enabled to leave and need to leave in order to find jobs in the rising cities. Dislocated communities. Another thing that's going on is, enlarged sense of community. You're interacting now with people over a much broader range, you're getting the news about things that are happening in Paris even if you're living 100 or 200 miles away in central France. What used to seem like a distant matter that you'd hear about weeks later, is now something you can hear about in days maybe even the same day. So, if you have this enlarged sense community, people ask the question, Who are we? What binds us together? On which other people can I rely for help, security, prosperity? And what's filling that void? The answer is a common nation. Nations with common traditions, common folk pool, common languages. Indeed, if the language isn't entirely in common, you'll start propagating the teaching of that language so that everyone can now learn the common language so that every schoolchild will learn standard French. In other words, if you believe in the nation you also believe in the creation of a national culture. So one point I want to draw out is, this national culture is partly something that's arising and sensibly naturally but a lot of the creation of a national culture is a very conscious development. People are deliberately trying to propagate the teaching of a common language propagate the teaching of a common culture. A deliberate effort to create a national identity. People had high hopes for what would happen in a community of nations. Take a look at this illustration which dates from the middle of the 1800s. This is obviously a romantic illustration but it's capturing the hopes of the painter for the creation of a brotherhood of mankind, a brotherhood founded on different nations. You see, these are flags that have different national symbols over on the left you see the tricolor of France, in the center you see the colors of a German nation. Then you see the colors of an Italian nation and so on and on. What's going on here? You see the argument is is that in the past we were divided by the rivalries of jealous princes and the princes would quarrel with each other over who would had the largest estates and the princes would pull the people into their princely wards. Instead, if we create nations, in which the ordinary aspirations of human beings can be properly reflected, these nations are naturally going to get along. At least that was the hope. So now, think about the problems that one would have to solve if you believed in the creation of a strong national identity, of a national culture. Ask yourself if you're the leader of such a state, who is your rival? Who else is laying claim to dominance and cultural creation? Well in most societies, not just in Europe but even say, in the Islamic world the major rival to cultural creation are the Church, the priests, the Imaam. So in Europe, you very quickly see a heightened conflict between state and church as rivals for power. Just take for instance, the question who runs the schools? Who hires the teachers? Who determines what will be taught? So here's an illustration of that conflict for instance, in the German case over on the left you have the character of the Prussian Chancellor. Later become the German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. On the right, you have the Catholic Pope. Bismarck and the Pope are involved in a chess game for who will be most influential in what German's called a Kulturkampf or really a cultural war between church and state. And this particular chess game, Bismarck's pieces happened to be winning at the moment. The pope is lost in it. So the state then also, is helping to build up and sponsor universities that will be centers for higher learning, centers for training people in these new sciences, and philosophy but also inculcating the study of national history. And of course the state's very involved in trying to spread education especially this new thing public schools. Most of you watching this take public schools for granted. They've always been part of your landscape. But if you went back and looked at the history of when your community first got public schools, you'll probably find that the answer is some time in the 1800s. Why is the state building public schools? Well think about it for a second. Where were children getting their education before public schools? Either they didn't get much education or affluent people hired from private schools or private tutors or the church would provide. The state now wants to play that role. Partly, it wants more people to be educated, wants more people to be literate. Partly so they can be productive members of their society, better workers, better craftsmen but also partly to teach them the common language, common traditions, common history that will make them loyal and responsible citizens. Remember that word again 'citizens', we talked about what an important word that was during the age of the Democratic revolutions. Well if you're going to create a national state, you're going to want to create a state that can support the development of a good citizenry. Actually, an essential part of creating these new national communities, giving them a common sense of identity is the growth of the press. This is a really important phenomenon as you can distribute literally pieces of paper much more rapidly around a much larger area. Newspapers become a much bigger deal. If I can read within a few days a newspaper telling me about the news that happened hundreds of miles away, I'm beginning to feel like I'm a member somehow of a larger common community. Sharing information about what's going on, talking about the same things they're talking about over there. The press therefore, is a hugely important part of the development of these new nation states and influential people in the state sure understood that point. Then you could even ask yourself, "well how did newspapers get around?". Well, in the 1800s, the way you delivered them is the way you spread the news is you had to have a mailman. You had to have post offices. Again, think about it for a moment. In the 1700s, mainly post offices, 'mailman' as we know them today, that didn't exist. Again, that's another creation of the 1800s, the nation state is building the capability for national communication. In the United States for example, the principal duty of the early post offices spreading all over the country under federal government control, is to deliver newspapers; binding the nation together. Often these newspapers actually, were published by one or another political party. Both the delivery of these newspapers and the appointment as to who would run the local post office were key issues of political patronage. In fact, I've chosen this term spreading the news from a wonderful book by the historian Richard John, describing the origins of the U.S. Postal Service. The newspapers therefore, become documents for the masses. England is setting an example for the first mass circulation newspaper. Here's an example of it. This is the front page of The Times of London in January 1860. This was a mass circulation newspaper. Now the mass circulation say in 1860, was probably 50- 60 thousand, scores vastly larger than that circulation of any newspaper had been a generation earlier. This would be eclipsed by an order of magnitude just in a few years. But it's interesting looking at the front page of The Times actually the big news stories in The Times are a few pages in were accustomed to seeing the news dramatically portrayed in headlines you can't read any of this. But if we were to just zoom in for example, on some piece of this, what's on the front page really are notices of things going on around town. So, tonight Mr Brindley Richards is going to offer a New Year's concert at St. James Hall and even tells you what the program is going to be and who is going to be singing. Over here just to the right, ah, the circus is in town. And right above it. Oh. Madame Tussauds exhibition. These new wax creations that are being developed there, literally local news about things going on and then wider national and world news will be on the inside for those who were interested in that sort of thing. All of this also creates a whole new range of people who can devote themselves to national service. Service of the nation. Thousands and thousands of new positions. Think about it for just a moment why do you need people to staff all those post offices? You're setting up around the country to help spread information; postmaster's, mail deliverers. Or you can have posting by postings I mean oh, someone needs to be posted to India to serve in the colonial service to help manage the British administration in Calcutta or someone in Holland needs to be posted to Jakarta working in the governance of the Dutch East Indies. So whether it's going out to a local post office or going to Calcutta, all sorts of new national service positions are coming open. To think about another huge example, you need teachers for these public schools. The teachers need to be trained. They need to be imbued with their responsibility to train future citizens. And so, you'll hire thousands and thousands of people to do that. Interestingly, you'll see that to symbolize that they're all in national service, they'll all wear common clothes. The term for these clothes will be 'uniforms'. It's interesting to notice this term this word 'uniform'. Yes soldiers and people like that had worn distinctive outfits before. But really the outfits the soldiers wore used to vary enormously from one to another from one regiment to another depending on whether you are cavalry or infantry or even within the cavalry. This regiment of hussars versus that regiment of cuirassiers and so on and on. The whole notion that there ought to be a uni form; one costume with distinctive looks that could instantly identify you as a servant of the nation. In fact, public school teachers might also wear a uniform. The taste in uniforms and the fashion that goes with it is spreading all over the world. Take for example this illustration from Parisian magazine showing the latest resplendent fashions of military uniforms in the Ottoman Empire in the 1880s. You'll notice by the way, that all the officers are wearing the fez which in the 1840s and 1850s becomes practically the mandatory fashion, replacing that traditional turban. Also, just look at the design of the uniforms with their epaulets, the braid, where the metals are worn. This is very much following European models of military fashion. Now being standardized all over the world. So at the same time in the 1880s, if we were to look at a picture of a Japanese officer, the Japanese officer will also be resplendent in a uniform that looks very much like this. In fact, in the Japanese case, borrowed from French examples; the French of course being fashion trendsetters even then. People think that they're part of history, that they're making history, that they're part of a narrative they hope part of a narrative of progress. Think about the narrative that goes with the creation of a nation. In the traditional world, static, the rivalries of princes. But now, a nation is coming together. It's coming together with its distinctive traditions to fulfil its sense of national purpose, sense of national destiny. People like the Polish writer Mickiewicz or the Italian Mazzini feel very strongly that the reason that Mazzini is arguing for the coming together of an Italian nation. There's a reason why he thinks the Italian nation needs to come together. It's to find its higher purpose, its higher destiny rooted in its traditions that will allow it to achieve great things. What those great things will be, what the destiny is for the nation may vary from writer to writer but its important that they think the coming together of the nation is part of almost a gospel of progress. Here's an illustration of a gospel of progress. This is taken from the example of the United States. It's a kind of a famous popular illustration, but it captures something that the painter of thought would appeal to a lot of people in a pretty simple way. So, you see the central figure is kind of the symbol of manifest destiny. You see in the painting, The farmer now bringing the land under the plough. You see the miners, the wagon train moving west. See railroads with their steam engines leading the advance. Notice that the central figure is carrying in her left hand a telegraph wire. And of course, the savage denizens of the older civilization are fleeing before the advance of progress. And it's a simple figure, you can make fun of it but it's capturing something that felt really important to the people of this period and as a student of history, it's important to understand these feelings as the sense of these common national communities gets stronger and stronger. So two are the debates about who are the members of this nation and what ideals does our common nation represent? A variety of experiments on how to group different communities together in the Confederation begin to break down in the 1850s and 1860s. Let me give you a few examples of that; So here's the way the Italian peninsula looked after the peace settlement that ended in the Napoleonic wars. You see there is no such thing as Italy. It's broken up into a number of different states. If you were to look in the south the kingdom of the two Sicily's is ruled by a branch of the bourbon family of nobles. Oh there's a grand duke who rules the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and so on. The Austrian Empire has got a large part of northern Italy up here and this area around Rome is part of the Papal States, a series of principalities actually ruled by the pope in Rome. Let's take a look at how that's changing by the 1850s and 1860s. It changes in two directions; the first direction of change is up here in the north coming out of the kingdom of Piedmont. Piedmont basically allied itself with France to battle against the Austrians and succeeded with French help in winning the province of Lombardy, for which in exchange it gave France this area here and this area here nice and civil way. Piedmontese being led by a very shrewd statesman man named Count Cavour- a very different kind of revolutionary is this man Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi is very much a liberal revolutionary trying to overthrow rotten reactionary monarchies and it's pretty easy to find a rotten reactionary monarchy if you go to Sicily and the Kingdom of the two Sicily's that's where Garibaldi and a group of adventurous volunteers, many of them, the sons of aristocrat's land here in 1860 rapidly taking the great city of Palermo and quickly overrunning the rest of Sicily and moving up towards Naples itself. From both North and South, the old principalities and kingdoms are falling away. Finally, almost all of this peninsula is being unified under Piedmont which will make itself a new kingdom of Italy; the last to fall or the papal states, and the Kingdom of Italy is finally formally created under Piedmontese former king in Rome in 1870. So the confederal experiment has given way to the creation of a unified national community called Italy. Further north, we see the same thing happening with even more momentous consequences in what we now call Germany. The notion of a German nation goes back a couple of generations and is gathering strength in the early 1800s. There had been a loose confederation of German speaking states that it involved a lot of this area depicted in the map here. What happens in the 1860s is that the most powerful member of that Confederation, the kingdom of Prussia consciously decides to lead a series of campaigns and efforts to create a new and more unified German state. The kingdom of Prussia increasingly incorporates a number of former German principalities, they wage a war against Denmark that they win; they wage a war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire which is vying for domination of some of these German principalities, the Prussians are again successful there. They form an alliance with the remaining southern German states. Above all Bavaria here when they find themselves in a war against their ancient enemy, France. The Germans feel like France had been pushing them around for the previous hundred years and more so when the German chancellor Bismarck is able to manipulate the rather pompous French Emperor Napoleon the third into declaring war on him. This is a popular war for the Germans as they unite together to defeat their long hated enemy and German armies invade and actually successfully surround Paris itself. And finally the French empire of Napoleon the third collapses Napoleon the third having already been captured in one of the battles of this Franco-Prussian War. A new republic was created in France in 1871. The Germans triumphant, declare the creation of a new German Empire. The states above all Prussia, will remain together in a federation, but that federation will now be an empire and the new German Emperor, is also the King of Prussia. The King of Prussia becomes the German Kaiser; a derivation from the old Roman Caesar. So just to give you a sense of contrast of how Europe has changed as a result of the rise of the nation states. Here's just a reminder of the way Europe used to look. This is Europe say, in the 1500s. It's kind of look around the map just kind of get a little bit of a sense and this map actually even simplifies the story of who ruled what quite a bit. By the way, there's little Prussia up there surrounded by Poland Lithuania and so on and on and just kind of look at the way that map looks and then look at the way this map looks; Europe in 1871. And you can see pretty dramatically what I mean by the rise of nation states. There is one more confederal experiment that was dramatically tested in the 1860s. That's pretty close to my home, The United States of America. Let's take a look. Here in the United States of America in 1861; early on I explained that one way the Americans had been able to hold together this precarious union of a number of different republics is they create a kind of compound republic a republic of republics with a pretty intricate balance between what the rights were of the federal government and the rights were all the component states inside the union. Indeed, in all the encyclopedias you'll find before 1860, the term United States of America is a plural noun. So like you might say, the United States of America 'are' devoted to doing this and such rather than the United States 'is' devoted just, to capture the sense of is a plural combination. So this map demonstrates the areas that are slave states. And then some of the areas that are currently being contested for the possible expansion of slavery. So the question becomes, as Lincoln once put it, can this republic endure half slave and half free? Some people think it can that the old union can remain together. The compromise that's suggested by the Republicans represented by Abraham Lincoln is; "we can hold together, but only if slavery doesn't expand any further than it is now". The slave states actually refuse to remain in a union that is trying to stop the expansion of slavery because that will seem to de-legitimize what they're doing. Whatever promises are given that slavery can remain in their states are not good enough for them. So they secede from the union and break apart. They think that they're actually now needs to be at least two different countries in the space. And whether or not the American Union will survive is in original form, is the over arching issue of the great civil war that then engulfs this part of North America. The American Civil War was being watched closely by the European world. It was being watched closely because this American Republic is the largest experiment in creating a republic of any kind, anywhere in the world. So depending on your attitudes towards Republicanism, you were either rooting for the union to stay together or you were rooting for it to break apart and confirm your pessimism that such a thing could ever hold together. Also, if you're worried about the rising power of this gigantic American union, you're also rooting for it to break apart to a bunch of constituent states. Global forces actually play a really big part. And the fact that there is an American civil war at all, why? The slave States believed that they are the world's spring growers of cotton, which is the most valuable raw material of the middle of the 1900s. If you wanted to think about the wealth the Persian Gulf as an oil producer in today's world, these folks think of themselves as the Persian Gulf so to speak of the middle of the 1800s. They're creating this incredibly valuable raw material that the world is desperate to have. They believe that if they succeed, they're still producing this cotton that their economic future is assured. In fact, they think that countries like Britain are bound to support them because the British couldn't possibly tolerate the loss of these valuable supplies of cotton. Although the British very quickly start working on how to adapt to this loss, by getting more cotton growing in places like India and Egypt. But my main point then is that these are not just local struggles. These are local struggles that are influenced a lot by global forces. Some of those global forces are economic. Like the cotton point I just made. Also, though it's the spread of global ideas. The American Civil War as an arena for the contest of ideas about republics; whether republics can survive. This whole tension between the global and increasingly globalized world and the local is playing out all over the world, as we'll get into more in the next presentation on the global and the local. See you then.
