Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

CHAPTER 7NATIONALISMEvery people has its special mission, which will co-operate towards the fulfilmentof the general mission of humanity. That mission constitutes its nationality. Nationalityis sacred.Act of Brotherhood of Toung Europe, 1834The day will come . . . when sublime Germania shall stand on the bronze pedestalof liberty and justice, bearing in one hand the torch of enlightenment, which shall throwthe beam of civilization into the remotest corners of the earth, and in the other thearbiter's balance. The people will beg her to settle their disputes; those very people whonow show us that might is right, and kick us with the jackboot of scornful contempt.From SiebenpfeifFer's speech at the Hambach Festival, 1832IAFTER 1830, as we have seen, the general movement in favour ofrevolution split. One product of this split deserves special attention:the self-consciously nationalist movements.The movements which best symbolize this development are the'Youth' movements founded or inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini shortlyafter the 1830 revolution: Young Italy, Young Poland, Young Switzerland,Young Germany and Young France (1831-6) and the analogousYoung Ireland of the 1840s, the ancestor of the only lasting andsuccessful revolutionary organization On the model of the early nineteenthcentury conspiratory brotherhoods, the Fenians or Irish RepublicanBrotherhood, better known through its executive arm of the IrishRepublican Army. In themselves these movements were of no greatimportance; the mere presence of Mazzini would have been enoughto ensure their total ineffectiveness. Symbolically they are of extremeimportance, as is indicated by the adoption in subsequent nationalistmovements of such labels as 'Young Czechs' or 'Young Turks'. Theymark the distintegration of the European revolutionary movement intonational segments. Doubtless each of these segments had much the samepolitical programme, strategy and tactics as the others, and even muchthe same flag—almost invariably a tricolour of some kind. Its memberssaw no contradiction between their own demands and those of othernations, and indeed envisaged a brotherhood of all, simultaneouslyliberating themselves. On the other hand each now tended to justify132