Nationalism Threatens Old Empires

1. Nationalism Threatens Old Empires Chapter 10 Section 4

2. The Hapsburgs had controlled the Holy roman empire for nearly 400 years when Napoleon invaded the German-speaking states. This left the Austrian Hapsburg’s center of power in Eastern Europe. • Further wars resulted in the loss of territory to Germany and Italy. • In Eastern Europe, the Austrian Hapsburgs and the Ottoman Turks ruled lands that included diverse ethnic groups. • Nationalist feelings among these people contributed to tensions building across Europe

3. A Declining Empire • In 1800 the Hapsburgs were the oldest ruling house in Europe. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Austrian Emperor Francis I and Metternich, his foreign minister, had upheld conservative goals against liberal forces. • Under Francis I and Metternich, Austrian newspapers could not even use the word “constitution,” much less discuss the demands of liberals. • The government even limited industrial development, which would threaten traditional ways of life.

4. Though they resisted change, by the 1840s factories were springing up. • Soon the Hapsburgs found themselves facing the problems of industrial life that had long been familiar to Britain – the growth of cities, worker discontent, and the stirrings fo socialism.

5. A patchwork of people: • Equally disturbing to the Hapsburg rulers were the urgent demands of nationalists. • The Hapsburgs presided over a multinational empire. Of its 50 million people at mid-century, fewer than a quarter were German-speaking Austrians. • Almost half belonged to different slavic groups, including Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The Empire also included large numbers of Hungarians and Italians.

6. The Hapsburgs ignored nationalists demands as long as they could. • “Peoples?” Francis I once exclaimed. “What does that mean? I know only subjects.” • When nationalist revolts broke out across the Hapsburg empire in 1848, the government crushed them.

7. Early Reforms: • Amid the turmoil, 18-year-old, Francis Joseph inherited the Hapsburg throne.d • He would rule over the empire until 1916, during its fading days into World War I. • He was humiliated when Austria suffered its defeat by France and Sardinia in 1859. Realizing he would have to strengthen the empire at home, Francis Joseph made some limited reforms.

8. He granted a new constitution that set up a legislature. However, it was dominated by German-speaking Austrians. • Therefore, the reforms didn’t satisfy any of the other national groups that populated the empire. • The Hungarians, especially, were determined to settle for nothing less than total self-government.

9. The Dual Monarchy • Austria’s defeat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 brought renewed pressure for self-rule from the Hungarians. • Francis Deak, a moderate Hungarian leader, helped work out a compromise that created a new political power called the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. • Under the agreement Austria and Hungary were separate states, each with its own constitution and parliament. Francis Joseph ruled both as emperor of Austria and king or Hungary.

10. The two states also shared ministries of finance, defense, and foreign affairs, but were independent of each other in all other areas. • Although Hungarians welcomed the compromise, other groups like Slavs and Czechs resented it. • Nationalist leaders called on Slavic people to unite, insisting that “only through liberty, equality, and fraternal solidarity” could Slavic people fulfill their “great mission to mankind. • National unrest often left the government paralyzed in dealing with political and social problems.

11. Balkan Nationalism • Like the Hapsburgs, the Ottomans ruled a multinational empire stretching from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to North Africa and the Middle East. • Serbia won its independence from the Ottomans in 1817, and southern Greece won independence in the 1830s. • But, many Serbs and Greeks still lived in the Balkans under Ottoman rule. During the 1800s various nationalist groups staged revolts against the Ottomans to win independence.

12. The great European powers, by the mid-1800s, saw the declining Ottoman Empire as “the sick man of Europe.” • They scrambled to divide up Ottoman lands. Russia pushed south toward the Black Sea and Istanbul, which Russia still called Constantinople. • Austria-Hungary took control of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This angered the Serbs, who had hoped to expand into that area because many Slavic people lived there. France and Britain also set their sights on other Ottoman lands in the Middle East and North Africa.

13. A complex web of competing interests contributed to a series of crises and wars in the Balkans. Russia fought a series of wars against the Ottomans. France and Britain sometimes joined the Russians and sometimes the Ottomans. • Germany supported Austrian authority over the discontented national groups, but also encouraged the Ottomans because of their strategic location in the eastern Mediterranean. • By the early 1900s, observers were referring to the region as the “Balkan powder keg.” The explosion that came in 1914 helped set off World War I.