Nationalism originated during the Napoleonic Wars,  a response among various European peoples to a generation of French domination. Germans were among the earliest to express an ideal of national unity in the face of French power. The German poet Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, speaking To the German Nation (Document 4-1) in 1806, describes the ideal of national unity and the special cultural and historical qualities that define all nations. Like other early nationalists, such as Giuseppi Mazzini, who celebrated Italian nationhood (see "Duties to Your Country," in Documenting the Modern World, pp. 48-49), Fichte celebrates uniqueness, difference, and looks for every nation to develop its qualities freely, completely, and equally. The painting at right, called "La Retour de Russie" (The Return from Russia), was painted by Theodore Gericault in 1818. It depicts French soldiers returning home after Napoleon's defeat. The painting is part of an online exhibition at the Library of Congress web site called "Creating French Culture." To see more, go to lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/bnf/bnf0001.html

Nationalism in Great Britain had different meanings than it did on the European continent. While Restoration leaders like Metternich tried to suppress liberalism at all costs, British nationalist struggles after 1815 focused on another kind of question: Who ought to be included in the Parliamentary electoral system? In 1819, a mass meeting for Parliamentary reform held in Manchester was broken up by local police authorities. This was the so-called  Peterloo Massacre (Document 4-3), which quickly became a rallying cry for radicals. In 1832, after many years of agitation, the British Parliament passed the Great Reform Bill (Document 4-4), a sweeping reorganization of political representation that brought about 300,000 new voters, mostly middle class and many from the new industrial districts, into the political system to share power with the landed aristocracy which had historically controlled Parliament. Still, the reform left over 80% of adult British males without voting rights. For thousands of working-class activists who had helped the middle class fight for the right to vote in the years before 1832, the limited nature of Parliamentary reform seemed like a betrayal. In the late 1830s, many turned to a movement called Chartism, named after the People's Charter, the six-point proposal that outlined the democratic reforms this working-class movement wanted passed into law (see The Modern World, p. 84). Chartist leaders compiled a petition enumerating their demands for political inclusion, signed by more than a million  British subjects. In 1839 the petition was presented to Parliament, which promptly refused to discuss it. Three years later, in 1842, another and larger petition (with over three million signatures) was presented to Parliament, which again refused to consider it. This time the reaction in the industrial districts, where Chartism had its greatest support, was angry and violent. The so-called Plug Riots (Document 4-5), named for the rioters' strategy of pulling the plugs on the steam boilers that powered factories, erupted throughout the summer of 1842, combining economic discontent (1842 was also a year of depressed prices and wages) with Chartist political demands. The British adoption of democratic politics came slowly. Battles over the pace of change closely reflected battles over the definition of British nationality, over who would make up "the nation" represented by members of Parliament. 

In the nineteenth-century United States, Civil War (1861-1865) and the Reconstruction era (1865-1877) tested and defined American nationality. Defined from the beginning by the revolutionary declarations of liberty and equality, American national identity was tainted (and haunted) by the questions of slavery and racial prejudice, which were literally written into the Constitution in the "three-fifths compromise" (see The Modern World, pp 28-30). Sectional differences--with slavery at their heart--exploded into war in 1861. Union victory, and emancipation of the slaves, left unresolved the question of how the former slaves would be integrated into American politics and society. The Reconstruction Amendments (see Documenting the Modern World, pp. 64-65) reflected Federal efforts to enforce Constitutional rights and legal equality for African Americans. The Amendments remained, though legal equality faded with the reassertion of "states' rights" and white supremacy in southern states after 1877. Read this 1865 Address of Negroes (Document 4-6) to hear the voices of African Americans asking their government to assert and protect their newly gained freedom shortly after the war ended. What do these newly freed people want from the government? How do they feel about white southerners? The photograph below shows a group of former slaves in Virginia in 1862. For many more examples of visual primary sources on this topic, see the Library of Congress Website of Civil War Photography (Document 4-7).

The Civil War shows how conflicted and violent was the process that created American national identity. In the midst of the Civil War, the worst urban riot in American history displayed many of the conflicts affecting the nation as a whole. Until 1863, service in the Union Army had been entirely voluntary. But by that year, the North needed to begin a military draft in order to recruit fresh troops. Congress passed the Union Conscription Act of March 3, 1863, providing that all able-bodied males between the ages of 20 and 45 were liable for military service. However, any drafted man who furnished an acceptable substitute or paid the government $300 was excused. A defective piece of legislation enforced amid great unpopularity, it provoked nationwide disturbances that were most serious in New York City, where for four days (July 13–16, 1863) there occurred large-scale, bloody riots. Many elements in New York sympathized with the South anyway, and the war had aggravated long-standing economic and social grievances. For example, "nativist" Protestant whites were usually Republican and supporters of President Lincoln and the war effort against the slave-holding south, while immigrant Irish Catholics were Democrats and deeply distrusted the Protestant "Yankees" who often feared and despised them as "un-American". The Irish and other immigrants, meanwhile, were competing for jobs with the free black population in New York. Aroused by the statements of New York Governor Horatio Seymour and other politicians that the conscription act was unconstitutional, the working class of New York City was incited to action. Laborers, mostly Irish-Americans, made up the bulk of a tremendous mob that overpowered the police and militia, attacked and seized the Second Avenue armory containing rifles and guns, and set fire to buildings. Robbing and looting went on for several days throughout the city. Anyone who appeared wealthy was open to attack, as were known abolitionists. But blacks were the special target of the mob. Many blacks were lynched or beaten to death, and a black orphanage was burned, leaving hundreds of children homeless. Read this Account of the Draft Riot (Document 4-8) written by John Torrey, who was a well-known scientist and a professor at Columbia College, which was then located at 49th Street and Madison Avenue. Order was only restored after Union troops were rushed to the city fresh from the battle of Gettysburg. In the end, the draft law was changed to limit the privilege of buying one's way out of military service only to conscientious objectors. No one knows exactly how many people died in the rioting, but it was probably as many as 1,000. The illustrations below show scenes of the riot as they were pictured in newspapers of the time:

Question: What does the Draft Riot tell you about the history of American nationalism? What conclusions can you draw from reading John Torrey's account of the disturbances?

The enormous consequences of nationalism in modern history cannot be overstated. As an ideology and a cultural force, nationalism remade societies and brought whole peoples to new levels of achievement. Nationalism also created equally momentous conflicts between peoples, with terribly destructive results around the world. Good and bad alike have flowed from the energy unleashed by this most modern of ideologies. Japan was the first non-western society to adopt modern nationalist aims and methods. Responding to increasing pressures exerted by the West (principally the United States) in the early 1850s, Japanese leaders drawn from the samurai warrior class engineered a political revolution--called the Meiji Restoration--in 1867. What followed, over the next thirty years, was the remaking of Japanese politics, economy, and culture, in which Western innovations were fused onto Japanese traditions, creating a dynamic, powerful, modernizing society. The industrialist Shibuzawa Eichi (Documenting the Modern World, p. 71), describes some aspects of this transition very well. Exploring this site on Meiji Japan (Document 4-9) will introduce you to several different dimensions of the Meiji era. Identify one or two areas of national life--economics, politics, social life--in which Meiji-era Japanese absorbed Western influences. Using these specific examples, compare the changes undergone by a modernizing Japan with equivalent historical changes in Great Britain or France or the United States. Was the Japanese experience of modernization different than it was in these Western societies?