The Origins of the Wars of German Unification

William Carr, Harry Hearder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781138153042
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317872023
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

In his last book, the late William Carr provides a masterly account of the origins and impact of the three major wars fought by Prussia in creating the Bismarckian Reich of 1871. He begins with a study of the development of nationalism and liberalism from the late eighteenth century to the 1860's, before turning to a detailed examination of the Schleswig-Holstein Conflict of 1864; the `Six Weeks War' of 1866; and the Franco-Prussia War of 1870--71.

Chapter 1

THE NEW IDEOLOGIES

NATIONALISM AND LIBERALISM

If one were to select a single historical force which moulded the history of Europe in the nineteenth century, without question it would be the French Revolution. This cataclysmic upheaval in the premier state in Europe released a ferment of ideas and fathered political movements which made a lasting impact on the face of the old continent. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the watchwords of that revolution, were carried on the bayonets of the French armies to most parts of Western Europe. The old order was shaken to the foundations, thrones tumbled, many ancient feudal privileges were abolished, the structure of government was at least partially rationalized and the accumulated lumber of centuries sometimes discarded virtually overnight.

In the storm and stress of these years two new ideological concepts emerged: liberalism and nationalism. Defining them is no easy task. The historical antecedents of liberalism reach back in time to the English Revolution and the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Broadly speaking, liberals believed that man was not destined to remain for ever the helpless prisoner of century-old traditions, stifled in his development by the arbitrary actions of all-powerful monarchs. A fundamental tenet of the liberal ideology was the conviction – first proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence – that all men possessed inalienable rights which preceded the establishment of civil government and which it was the duty of rulers to respect. Indeed, the whole purpose of government was to provide a minimum framework of law and order within which man would enjoy equality before the law, freedom of movement and association, and be able to develop his talents to the full. Secondly, liberals believed that sovereignty resided in the people – a concept Jean-Jacques Rousseau first expressed in imperishable prose in the Contrat Social – and that civil government should be conducted in its interests. Generally speaking, liberalism went hand in hand with nationalism.

Historians and political scientists cannot agree on a catch-all definition of this complex and multifaceted phenomenon. Tentatively it may be described as a system of values and beliefs which lead a group of people to become conscious of belonging together because of characteristics such as a common language, common culture or subjection to the same ruler and which are capable of mobilizing the group politically. It is the element of popular participation which differentiates modern nationalism from what is sometimes termed ‘proto-nationalism’, stretching back over the centuries in many lands. There has been much debate but little agreement in recent years about the earlier forms of nationalism. One can summarize the position by saying that consciousness of the separate identity of a nation preceded the French Revolution but was confined to the ruling élite – the nobility supported by the clergy – and in the late medieval period by the rising bourgeoisie. The mass of the population was, however, scarcely touched by proto-nationalism. In addition, early consciousness of nationality was thickly overlaid by the bonds of universal religion.

The French Revolution marks the turning-point in the growth of modern nationalism. It contributed two new concepts to political philosophy: the secular state recognizing no higher authority than itself and no longer seeking legitimization from the Church; and, secondly, the nation of equal citizens. The latter concept was a mixed blessing. While the state guaranteed to the citizen the enjoyment of certain rights, he was simultaneously placed under certain obligations to serve the community and, if need be, give his life in its defence. Out of this obligatory element grew the power of the modern state, demanding supreme loyalty from its citizens to its institutions. Taken to extremes it produced the totalitarian regimes of the mid – twentieth century which, in theory at least, were not prepared to leave any sphere of life to individual choice.

Why did nationalism emerge as the dominant ideology in Germany and, for that matter, in other parts of Europe in the nineteenth century? For decades Friedrich Meinecke’s classic study Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, written at the beginning of the twentieth century, was regarded as the definitive work on the growth of German nationalism. Nowadays scholars doubt whether the nationalist phenomenon can be explained satisfactorily solely in terms of a marriage between folkish values, the writings of certain poets and philosophers and the material power of Prussia. The missing ingredient which recent studies of nationalism emphasize is the complex process of modernization which was changing the structure of Europe from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards.

The argument runs as follows: the old basis on which the authority of rulers had rested for centuries was undermined by a number of interconnected factors. In an age of declining religious faith and unprecedented social change the ‘divinity that hedges round a king’ was losing its potency to legitimize monarchical rule. Europe was changing rapidly, most notably in terms of population. In 1750 130 million people lived in Europe; by 1800 the figure rose to 187 million and by 1900 had reached 401 million. In the area which became the Reich of 1871 17 million people were living in 1750; by 1800 this figure had risen to 25 million, by 1850 to 35.4 million and by 1900 to 56.4 million.

Such an enormous increase – for which improved hygiene standards, falling mortality rates and better diet were mainly responsible – presented rulers with massive control problems. This was especially true in rapidly growing urban areas where the inadequacy of the bureaucratic apparatus to deal with problems of employment and social misery, together with the failure of the Church to evangelize the newcomers, had the most disturbing implications for monarchical stability.

Secondly, the advantage which illiteracy had given ruling élites over the masses was waning rapidly. One estimate suggests that whereas only 15 per cent of German adults were literate in 1770, this had risen to 40 per cent by 1830. In Prussia, for example, the numbers at elementary and middle schools increased by 50 per cent between 1830 and 1850. Reading societies were widespread in small towns throughout Germany in the early nineteenth century. Growing literacy made possible a veritable revolution in publishing; the publication of books and periodicals doubled in the first half of the nineteenth century. And as more and more ordinary people learned to read they could enter at last into a kingdom where competing ideologies wrestled for their allegiance, a development which might well undermine traditional loyalties to church and state.

Thirdly, a communications revolution transformed the lives of most people in the nineteenth century. Poor roads had for centuries isolated people from each other, restricted their mobility and tied them to one location for life. Improvements in road building and the introduction of steamships and railways had dramatic effects. For the first time a market economy emerged in which price discrepancies were ironed out as produce moved more quickly across Germany. Better communications enabled people to move out of closed environments, and most of all facilitated the dissemination of ideas and discussion of issues at national level for the first time. As a prominent German radical, Jakob Venedy, remarked in 1835: ‘In ten years when all great towns and capital cities are connected by rail, Germany will be another country and the prejudices which have divided the German people so much up to now and which have given our oppressors such easy mastery will cease to exist.’¹ Important, too, was the invention of the telegraph which dramatically reduced the time-lag between events and their reporting. For the first time news of events in Berlin and Vienna could be transmitted within minutes to all parts of Germany.

The pace of change was enormously accelerated by the impact of the Industrial Revolution which affected Germany in the mid nineteenth century. The exploitation of new productive forces dramatically altered the socio-economic landscape. Large urban centres became a feature of the new Europe as country-dwellers moved into towns. New productive relationships developed: a factory proletariat (very small in numbers outside Berlin) and a new industrial middle class (Besitzbürgertum) appeared on the scene. In the towns at any rate where dynastic loyalties were crumbling and religious beliefs were fading fast, nationalism – so it is argued – supplied a brand-new social cement to hold society together. Discontented people uprooted from their moorings and plunged into new surroundings where parish-pump loyalties were irrelevant and where their lives were dependent on the activities of thousands of strangers discovered a new sense of community in and through nationalism. Many people, especially lower-middle-class artisans overwhelmed by the social and economic problems of the mid nineteenth century, looked to a new national Reich to redress the grievances which individual rulers had singularly failed to do. Some writers go further and maintain that nationalism in its more extreme forms represented a substitute for organized religion, although the cases of Irish and Polish nationalism suggest that new and old values could co-exist side by side. More will be said later about the ritualism of nationalism. Suffice to say here that flags and songs and the boisterous hurrah patriotism of the mid nineteenth century gave tangible proof to the disoriented and socially deprived of their new place in society and a vision of the Reich to come. Nationalism, incidentally, was a two-edged sword. It was capable not only of comforting the lowly; rulers discovered in it a new legitimization enabling them to assert their authority over this new society and contain within tolerable limits the pressures for political and social change. In this sense nationalism, far from being a democratizing force, supplied rulers with a means of preserving with minimum dislocation the old order, a theme which will figure prominently in this book.

An alternative explanation is offered by Marxists who argue that the creation of nation states is essentially the characteristic expression of capitalist development. The new rising middle class sought national unification primarily to create a unified market in which to dispose of their manufactured goods. However, this interpretation applies much more to the mid nineteenth century when industrialization reached the ‘take-off’ stage than to the first half of the century when such demands played a relatively minor role in the origins of nationalism. Social discontent rather than buoyant capitalism seems to have given a greater impetus to the growth of a nationalist movement in the 1840s; the Bildungsbürgertum, the intelligentsia and government officials – not the captains of industry – were the pacemakers until the 1860s.

How useful have modernization theories been in shedding light on the origins of nationalism? It would be unfair to expect precise answers at this early stage before a great deal more work of a comparative nature has been done on nationalist movements.² What does emerge pretty clearly is that it is more than a coincidence that the nationalist phenomenon emerged at a time of intense social, economic and political change which could not be accommodated within existing power structures. The frustrations this engendered were certainly a factor explaining the growing demand for a nation state – a strong Reich – to give expression to popular aspirations whether for constitutional freedom, the relief of social misery or economic unification. Beyond this there are more questions than answers. How far was the emergence of nationalism bound up with class structures? Were nationalist leaders invariably middle class? Not necessarily, it would seem – the Polish aristocracy and Irish tenant farmers at once spring to mind as exceptions. How far was nationalism dependent on social tension? How important are the attitudes of foreign powers in moulding the course of nationalist movements? How exactly was the new ideology transmitted to the mass of the population? Did it exert much influence on the countryside until later in the century? How far did the modernization process assist or impede the spread of nationalism? In the German case arguably the partial modernization of some of the larger states discouraged the growth of a national movement in the initial stages, though industrialization altered the balance later. The absence of answers to such questions does not detract from the importance of modernization and communications theories. These are working models which open up new avenues of approach to the problem and are likely to confirm the view that modern nationalism is closely related to social, economic and political changes. This does not in any way detract from the influence of the Fichtes and Jahns and the Bismarcks. It merely broadens the picture by locating nationalism in a more meaningful sociological framework.

Liberalism and nationalism were associated concepts for most of those who sought political change in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. One of the main reasons why liberals demanded national unification was their conviction that only in a united state could individual rights be effectively protected against arbitrary interference from petty princes. Yet it was already apparent to a few perceptive observers of the political scene that liberalism and nationalism were not necessarily complementary concepts and that the desire for national unification could be exploited in the advancement of illiberal policies. To understand this point properly we must examine a third ideological force which emerged in the early nineteenth century: conservatism.

The origins of conservatism as a political philosophy preceded the French Revolution. Charles de Montesquieu in France and Justus Möser in Germany were already defending the status quo against enlightened princes who were seeking to modernize and centralize their dominions by reducing the power of the local nobility and of privileged communities. What the revolution did was to confer a new philosophical validity on the defence of vested interests. Writers such as Edmund Burke, Vicomte René de Chateaubriand and Comte Joseph de Maistre denounced the universal panacea of the revolutionaries and enthused about the hierarchical structure of ancien régime society where the aristocracy enjoyed a privileged position, authority was universally respected, privileges were preserved, law and order prevailed and religion acted as the social cement holding society together. This philosophy had a natural attraction for the landed nobility, a powerful force in post-revolutionary Europe. But it should be remembered that conservatives enjoyed at all times support from other social groups. Even during the Revolution peasants in some parts of Europe – for example in the Vendée – supported their lords. In the course of the nineteenth century other groups were attracted to conservatism. In the 1850s and 1860s master craftsmen (Handwerkermeister) turned to the conservatives because they were ready to preserve the ailing guild system which laissez-faire liberals wished to destroy. Later in the century as lower-middle-class groups grew in importance with the development of the industrial system, white-collar workers, perturbed by the growth of working-class organizations, allied with small businessmen and civil servants in supporting the conservatives.

This was not the only reason why conservatism flourished in the nineteenth century. Despite the significant conflict of principle between liberalism and conservatism, in practice conservatives had much less to fear from their liberal opponents. At the beginning of the chapter liberalism was defined as the belief that the object of government should be the protection of individual rights and that affairs of state should be conducted in the interests of the whole people, not of entrenched vested interests. In practice liberals had no desire to shift the balance of power towards the mass of the people. Nor did they seek a monopoly of power for the upper middle class but merely a share in the conduct of affairs, and that by agreement with the sovereign whose powers would be circumscribed in a written constitution. Shocked by the excesses of the French Revolution when rich and poor heads alike had rolled under Madame Guillotine, liberals shared the conservative belief that universal male suffrage – like absolute monarchy – would lead inevitably to tyranny. Only under pressure from below did the liberals agree in 1848 to extend the franchise for the Frankfurt Parliament. And they never lost their taste for aristocratic politics.

The rapprochement between moderate liberalism and conservatism in the first half of the nineteenth century was greatly accelerated by the growth of radicalism. Most liberals abhorred violence and confidently expected to change the structure of politics by agreement with the old order. Radicals with a firmer purchase on political reality knew in their bones that monarchs were unlikely to surrender even part of their power voluntarily and would have to be compelled to accept the type of constitutional arrangements favoured by radicals which would vest effective power in a legislature elected by universal male suffrage, and in a fully accountable executive. More extreme radicals advocated the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of a Jacobin-style republic. Nor were radicals content with mere legal equality. Was not the existence of privilege in the form of great wealth a denial of the principle of equality? Consequently radicals were prepared to take steps to correct this imbalance at the expense of vested interests. That posed a direct threat to upper-middle-class liberals totally committed to the defence of property rights.

All over Europe a new ‘alliance’ of conservative interests was in the making embracing moderate liberals, the new entrepreneurial classes and the old landed nobility. In this ‘alliance’ the landed interests remained dominant. True, agriculture was a declining sector of the economy throughout the century. That was, however, a slow process so that down to 1914 landed property remained the main source of personal wealth. Aristocrats remained in command of armies, occupied key administrative posts and in general functioned as a public service nobility in many countries. Internal tensions inside the ‘alliance’ were overshadowed by the joint resolve of aristocracy and middle classes to defend themselves against the ‘dark forces’ whose power manifested itself fitfully during the June Days of 1848 and again during the Commune of 1870–1.

What connection was there between conservatism and nationalism? It would be far too simplistic to suppose that conservatives were concerned only to exploit nationalism in their narrow class interests; they were, after all, as exposed to nationalist propaganda as any other group in society. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that one of the consequences of nationalism might well have been that it deflected the attention of the people away from the power of privilege. For nationalism emphasized what people had in common – or, more accurately, what they were alleged to have in common – not what divided them. A common tongue and shared cultural or historical traditions could unite people – if only at a superficial level – and transcend class interests which in the early industrial age might well tear the fabric of society asunder. In one sense what Bismarck and Cavour succeeded in doing was to square the political circle. Unification was brought about by force of arms primarily to serve the interests of Prussia and Piedmont. But by satisfying the demand of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations
• List of maps
• Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1. The New Ideologies
• Chapter 2. The War of 1864
• Chapter 3. The War of 1866
• Chapter 4. The War of 1870–1
• Bibliography
• Maps
• Index