Competing Ideologies

Response

Competing Ideologies

The years during 1815-1840 saw the rise of competing ideologies, each holding a different influence. The biggest of these ideals or isms being nationalism. Nationalism containing the key components of cultural equality, political reality and emergence of nation states relates to the ideologies of liberalism, romanticism, and the ideas found during the French Revolution. Overall nationalism was a radical idea with an enormous influence.

Nationalism’s first key component is cultural equality. This cultural equality was basically self-evident, manifesting itself especially in a common language, history, or territory. This relates to the French Revolution where the rising bourgeoisie rose up as a unified group to express their contempt to the aristocracy. In the French Revolution there was the idea that you sacrifice for the state which corresponds here in cultural equality. However local dialects abounded, and peasants from nearby villages often failed to understand each other. Historically, it divided German and Italian states as much as it unified them. This led to them wanting to turn cultural equality into a political reality.

After having a cultural equality the people wanted to take that Nationalism ideal one step further. They sought to make the territory of each people coincide with well-defined boundaries. This relates to romanticism and actually builds on nationalism because romanticism sought to find a greatness in all people and nationalism helped those groups of people find their identity. The one flaw was that when establishing the boundaries there were overlapping’s which made nationalism so explosive. This need to find your identity leads to the third ideal expressed in nationalism.

The ability for a minority to create their own nation state is the key concept of nationalism. The greatest example of this being