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At the time nation-states (and in particular France) consolidated themselves, the governance of the German-speaking parts of Europe was based on an older model, small principalities loosely associated in large empires. Consequently, many German thinkers developed a view of the nation as a bound based on ethnicity and, in particular, language and transcending ...
20
Who protects your daily security? Who does your loyalty belong to?
Initially (in the middle ages), the answer was your local nobleman, and, through him, via the duke and/or kind, to the Holy Roman Emperor.
Someone had to provide peace, and the choice was limited: whoever has won military control over your area most recently.
As long as they did not ...
18
As has been noted, the eagle became the national bird because it was chosen to be on the Great Seal, designed by Charles Thomson. The idea did not emerge out of thin air, however; the eagle is a very popular emblem with a very long history in heraldry. Two of the three committees designing the seal included the eagle in some form. Thus, Thomson would have ...
18
Hitler's ultimate motive was 'Upliftment of the Aryan Race'.
For this an auxillary goal was making the 'pure' German Nationality walk tall, and be strong.
Hitler was not a exactly a German nationalist, he was a Pan German, strifing for uniting the German race. This essentially opposed the rise of sub - nationalism among various states of German nationality....
17
Origins of Pan-Slavism
Speaking as a (western) Slav, panslavism was indeed a big topic in 19th century politics.
The primary reason for this seems to have been that outside of Russia, most Slavic populations were not in fact in their own nation states, but rather were subjugated by other national groups. This included, for instance, Czechs under Austrian ...
13
WW1.
WW1 started amid a wild enthusiasm in all European nations (cf. lecture 5 "August Madness").
The wave of nationalism even swept the SDP!
The war was a huge disappointment to everyone involved. This led some intellectuals to question nationalism. However, the war also lead to the first steps of decolonization and creation of nation-states in Eastern ...
13
This depends on how you define "responsible"
The immediate reason was that the Croats and Slovenes (and later all the other non-Serbian nationals) overwhelmingly wanted independence. Under those circumstances an eventual breakup was unavoidable.
Of course, you can look deeper and ask why did they want independence? Was is because of the Serbian dominance ...
12
@Relaxed is right to point out that Germany was unified under Prussian, not Austrian hegemony. Prussia’s 1866 military victory over Austria at Koeniggraetz definitively shut out the Austrians. Subsequently, the 1870 war between Prussia and France, with many of the remaining German states outside Austria joining in, led to William I of Prussian being ...
12
The thing is that at the time in question, France was actually quite diverse (and yet sufficiently unified on a political level to become a rather successful democratic nation-state rather than crumble like Austria-Hungary). And as you correctly surmised, Alsace-Moselle (the German “Elsaß-Lothringen”) loomed large in French minds but not quite for the ...
10
The answer is simple. In the parts of Imperial Russia that became the USSR, the Communist Party had managed to achieve sufficient control, and was determined to form a union. The parts that became independent had strong nationalist movements which won their conflicts with the local communist movements.
In Austria-Hungary, the nationalist movements won ...
7
It wasn't just about the Slavs; people everywhere were feeling this way.
It essentially happened because the idea of Nationalism: that people in ethnically, geographically, culturally, and linguistically coherent areas should owe their allegiance only to their own single native governments, became a popular sentiment worldwide. Ethnic nationalism was in ...
7
Jacques Kornberg, in his essay Theodor Herzl: Zionism as Personal Liberation in the book Theodor Herzl: From Europe to Zion writes:
Jews were not to make humanitarian or moral appeals; diplomacy was to be based on Realpolitik...Herzl played on exaggerated stereotypes of Jewish power by convoking an international congress of Jews in the clear light of day, ...
7
Iceland would probably count. It left its union with Denmark in 1918 at the end of a peaceful independence movement. However, it continued to share Denmark's king as head of state until 1944, when Nazi occupation of Denmark made that problematic.
The Icelandic independence movement was peaceful from its start in the
post-Napoleonic period to the ...
6
These situations were totally common throughout history. Starting from the industrial revolution in Britain which led to numerous concerns in France about their textile industry.
I can tell you many other examples.
The pre-revolutionary Russian Empire where German industry was seen to dominate over domestic industry.
The Cold War era Soviet Union where it ...
6
It's a big scary powerful bird of prey - which is always popular as symbols. It's pretty distinctive and AFAIK only lives on the North American continent.
Benjamin Franklin famously didn't agree. In a letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin wrote:
I wish that the bald eagle had not been chosen as the representative
of our country, he is a bird of ...
6
As an addendum to @Relaxed's answer, it's worthwhile to point out that Austria actually tried (twice) to annex Bavaria in the late 18th century. These attempts were frustrated by other European powers, chiefly Prussia who actually went to war with Austria over it, the so-called Potato War.
Curiously, the only gain that Austria made at the settlement of this ...
6
A little bit of both, but mostly "nationalism."
First of all, the will opposed a marriage of Charlotte to say a Frenchman or a German, (at least unless they happened to be British subjects like some Germans from Hannover). The idea then was that by marrying, a woman took on the nationality of her husband. So a foreign marriage would make her ineligible to ...
5
There is indeed a nice diploma thesis about this, that @WiJama found:
Lucia Tatarková; "Vplyv Spišských petícií na národné hnutie Slovákov v 60. rokoch 19. storočia", Filozofická fakulta Univerzity sv. Cyrila a Metoda v Trnave, 2007. (doc) /
(The Impact of Spiš Petitions on the National Movement of Slovaks in the 60s of the 19th century)
It has a German ...
5
Even the Mongols, who killed over thirty million people in their conquests and were some of the most bloodthirsty invaders on record found it more worthwhile to set themselves up as leaders. Why would they make China a desert when they could make the Chinese build them a pleasure dome?
Invasions occur in search of resources. Land is only one particular ...
5
Have they ever tried it before?
Yes, after the foundation of the republic, Manchurian elites fostered Manchurian nationalism in the dreams of an imperial restoration. The existence of this movement was one of the factors that culminated in the creation of Manchukuo by Japan in 1932.
A prominent example is Asin-Gioro Xi Qia, a distant member of the Qing ...
4
The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a polyglot nation of Germans (Oesterreich or "Austria" is German for Eastern Reich), Hungarians, Czechs, Slavs, etc. To Hitler and some other German Austrians, the only part of the country worth mentioning was "Austria," the German part. In his own mind, Hitler was "German" first, and only "Austrian" second. As the German ...
4
If you had been born in 1769, no you probably would not have been familiar with the concept of a National Anthem. At least not until you got quite old.
Wikipedia has a nice entry on National Anthems, wherein you will find that they "rose to prominence in Europe during the 19th century". Poking around a bit, it looks like the timing is more like the very ...
4
Advise Dr. Herzl not to take any further steps in his project. I
cannot give away a handful of the soil of this land for it is not my
own, it is for all the Islamic Nation that fought for the sake of this
land and watered it with their blood. The Jews may keep their
millions. If the Islamic Caliphate is one day destroyed then they will
be able to ...
4
I'm not sure the confusion here as the symbol is well attested in ancient Europe. The earliest finds of the symbol come from Eastern Europe.
The earliest known swastika comes from a figurine carved from mammoth dated to around 10-12,000 years old. It comes from Mezine in Ukraine.
The word swastika is from sanskrit, from India, but the symbol itself is ...
4
The bald eagle is the symbol of the United States due to its presence on the Great Seal of the United States. The Great Seal was developed by several different Congressionally-appointed committees and went through various design changes.
The first appearance of a bird on a proposed design was a phoenix, recommended by William Barton, an expert on heraldry. ...
4
Shoes
Boeing vs Airbus
BAE vs Lockheed Martin
Smoot Hawley
Fordney-Mccumber - which explicitly aimed to protect US factories.
You may also wish to check tariffs on Italian leather shoes - I don't have anything immediately to hand, but the US has traditionally levied tariffs on Italian shoes to protect domestic industry. I believe that Steel was protected ...
4
The new Republic of Austria, the German-speaking rump of was left of much larger entity after World War I, was legally prevented from reunification with Germany. Hitler was one of those who opposed the ban, and his committed atrocities in World War II were such that unification can no longer be mentioned in polite society even by today. Yet at the time the ...
4
Until the 1800s Germany was divided into many different countries. When the concept of nation states was developing, the general idea was people who spoke the same languages was the same nation. By some historical accident Austria was excluded when most of them formed united Germany, but it's people were still considerd Germans. The idea of a separate ...
4
Actually, the oldest national anthem in the world is the Dutch Wilhelmus, which dates back to the Dutch revolutionary war, being composed in 1574, with the text being even older, having been traced back to at the latest 1568.
It was not designated as such however until 1932, but had been the de-facto national anthem since that time, including being used on ...
4
In general, it is problematic to call "nationalism" anything before the French Revolution, because before that the idea that the nation was a political subject was just political-fiction.
Apart from that, before the second half of the XIX century, to many people it really did not affect much if his country was under the control of a foreign power. Travel ...
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