Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  So people imagine that there is an unchanging social system and it is nobody’s fault if the majority suffer under it. It is their own fault, it is kismet, it is fate, it is the punishment for past sins. Society is always conservative, and dislikes change. It loves to remain in the rut it has got into, and firmly believes that it was meant to remain there. So much so that it punishes most of those individuals who, wishing to improve its condition, tell it to come out of the rut.

  But social and economic conditions do not wait for the pleasure of the complacent and unthinking in society. They march on, although people’s ideas remain the same. The distance between these out-of-date notions and reality becomes greater, and if something is not done to reduce this distance and to bring the two together, the system cracks and there is a catastrophe. This is what brings about real social revolutions. If conditions are such, a revolution is bound to come, though it may be delayed by the drag of old-fashioned ideas. If these conditions do not exist, then a few individuals, however much they may try, cannot bring it about. When a revolution does break out, the veil that hides actual conditions from the people is removed and understanding comes to them very soon. Once they are out of the rut, they rush ahead. That is why during revolutionary periods people go forward with tremendous energy. Thus revolution is the inevitable result of conservatism and holding back. If society could avoid falling into the foolish error that there is an unchanging social order, but would always keep in line with changing conditions, there would be no social revolution. There would then be continuous evolution.

  I have written, without any previous intention of doing so, at some length about revolutions. The subject interests me, for today all over the world there appear to be misfits, and the social system seems to be breaking down in many places. This has been the herald of social revolution in the past, and one is naturally led to believe that we are on the eve of great changes in the world. In India, as in every country under foreign domination, nationalism and the desire to rid the country of alien rule are strong. But to a great extent this nationalistic urge is confined to the well-to-do classes. The peasantry and the workers and others, who live in perpetual want, are naturally more interested in filling their empty stomachs than in vague nationalistic dreams. For them nationalism or Swaraj has no meaning, unless it brings with it more food and better conditions. Therefore, in India today the problem is not merely a political one; even more so it is a social one.

  I have been led to this long digression about revolutions because of the many revolts and other disturbances in Europe during the nineteenth century which I was considering. Many of these revolts, and especially in the first half of the century, were nationalistic risings against foreign rule. Side by side with these, in the industrialized countries, ideas of social revolt began to spread the conflict of the new working class with its capitalist masters. People began to think about and work consciously for the social revolution.

  The year 1848 is called the year of revolutions in Europe. There were risings in many countries, some partly successful, but mostly ending in failure. A suppressed nationalism was at the back of the risings in Poland, Italy, Bohemia and Hungary. The Polish revolt was against Prussia, the Bohemian and the North Italian against Austria. They were all suppressed. The Hungarian revolt against Austria was the biggest of all. Its leader was Lojos Kossuth, who is famous in Hungarian history as a patriot and a fighter for freedom. In spite of two years of resistance, this revolt also was suppressed. Some years later Hungary succeeded by a different method of fighting under another great leader, Déak. It is interesting to note that Déak’s methods were those of passive resistance. In 1867 Hungary and Austria were joined together, more or less on an equal basis, to form what was called a “dual monarchy” under the Hapsburg Emperor, Francis Joseph. Déak’s methods of passive resistance became a model half a century later for the Irish against the English. When the Non-co-operation Movement was started in India in 1920, some people remembered Déak’s struggle. But there was a great deal of difference between the two methods.

  There were revolts in Germany also in 1848, but they were not very serious; they were suppressed and a promise of some reforms was made. In France there was a big change. Ever since the Bourbons had been driven out in 1830 Louis Philippe had been king, a kind of semi-constitutional monarch. By 1848 the people grew weary of him and he was made to abdicate. A republic was set up again. This was the Second Republic, as the first one was during the great Revolution. Taking advantage of the confusion, a nephew of Napoleon, named Louis Bonaparte, came to Paris and, posing as a great friend of liberty, was elected as President of the Republic. This was just a pretence to obtain power. Having fully established himself, he gained control of the army, and in 1851 there was what is called a coup d’état. He overawed Paris by his soldiers, shot down many people and terrorized the Assembly. The next year he made himself emperor, calling himself Napoleon III, as the great Napoleon’s son was supposed to be Napoleon II, although he had never reigned. So ended the Second Republic after a brief and inglorious career of a little over four years.

  In England there was no revolt in 1848, but there was a great deal of trouble and disturbance. England has a way of bending when real trouble threatens, and so avoiding it. Her constitution, being flexible, helps in this, and long practice has made the Englishman accept some compromise when there is no other way out. In this way he has managed to avoid big and sudden changes which have often come to other countries with more rigid constitutions and less compromising people. In 1832 there was great agitation in England over a Reform Bill, which gave the vote for electing members to Parliament to a larger number of people. Judged by modern standards, it was a very moderate and inoffensive Bill. Only some additional people of the middle classes were enfranchised; the workers and most others still did not have the vote. Parliament was then in the hands of a small number of rich persons, and they were afraid of losing their privileges and their “rotten boroughs”, which returned them to the House of Commons without any trouble. So these people opposed the Reform Bill with all their might and said that England would go to the dogs, and the world would come to an end, if the Bill were passed. England was on the verge of civil war when the Opposition, frightened by popular agitation, consented to the Bill being passed. Needless to say England survived it and Parliament continued, as before, to be controlled by the rich. The well-to-do middle classes gained further power.

  About 1848 another great agitation shook the country. This was called the Chartist Agitation, because it was proposed to present a monster petition to Parliament containing a “People’s Charter” demanding various reforms. After frightening the ruling classes greatly, the movement was suppressed. There was a great deal of distress and discontent among the working classes in the factories. About this time some labour laws began to be passed, and these slightly improved the lot of the workers. England was making money fast by its rising trade; it was becoming the “workshop of the world”. Most of these profits went to the owners of the factories; but a small part of them trickled down to the workers. All this helped in preventing a rising in 1848. But at the time it seemed a near thing.

  I have not finished with the year 1848 yet; the story of what happened in Rome that year still remains to be told. I must carry that over to the next letter.

  127

  Italy Becomes a United and Free Nation

  January 30, 1933

  Vasanta Panchami

  In my account of 1848 I have kept the story of Italy for the last. Of all the exciting happenings of the year 1848 the heroic struggle in Rome was the most fascinating.

  Italy before Napoleon’s time was a patchwork of little States and petty princes. Napoleon united it for a short while. After Napoleon it reverted to its previous state, or something even worse. The victorious allies at the Congress of Vienna of 1815 very considerately divided up the country among themselves. Austria took Venice and a great deal of territory round it; several Austrian princes wer
e provided with choice morsels; the Pope came back to Rome and the States adjoining it, called the Papal States; Naples and the south formed the kingdom of the two Sicilies under a Bourbon king; to the north-west, near the French frontier, there was a King of Piedmont and Sardinia. All these petty kings and princes, with the exception of Piedmont, ruled in a most autocratic way, and oppressed their subjects even more than they or others had done before Napoleon came. But Napoleon’s visit had stirred the country and inspired the youth with dreams of a free and united Italy. In spite of the oppression of the rulers, or perhaps because of it, there were many petty risings, and secret societies were formed.

  Italy in 1815

  Soon there emerged an ardent young man who came to be acknowledged as the leader of the movement for freedom. This was Giuseppe Mazzini, the prophet of Italian nationalism. In 1831 he organized a society, Giovane Italia—Young Italy—with the aim of an Italian Republic. For many years he worked for this cause in Italy and was an exile, often risking his life. Many of his writings became classics in the literature of nationalism. In 1848, when revolts were breaking out all over North Italy, Mazzini saw his chance and came to Rome. The Pope was driven away and a republic declared under a committee of three—Triumvirs they were called, a word from old Roman history. Mazzini was one of these three Triumvirs. This young Republic was attacked on all sides: by the Austrians, by the Neapolitans, even by the French, who came to restore the Pope. The chief fighter on the side of the Roman Republic was Garibaldi. He held the Austrians and defeated the Neapolitan armies, and even stopped the French. All this was done with the help of volunteers, and the bravest and best of the youth of Rome gave their lives in defence of the Republic. Eventually, after a heroic struggle, the Roman Republic fell to the French, who brought back the Pope.

  So ended the first phase of the struggle. Mazzini and Garibaldi carried on their work in different ways, by propaganda and preparation for the next big effort. They were very unlike each other; one was a thinker and an idealist, the other was a soldier with a genius for guerilla warfare. Both were fiercely devoted to Italian freedom and unity. A third player in this great game then became prominent. This was Cavour, the Prime Minister of Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont. Cavour was chiefly interested in making Victor Emmanuel King of Italy. As this involved the suppression and removal of many of the petty princes, he was perfectly prepared to take advantage of Mazzini’s and Garibaldi’s activities. He intrigued with the French—Napoleon III was the ruler in France then— and involved them in a war with his enemies the Austrians. This was in 1859. Garibaldi took advantage of the defeat of the Austrians by the French to lead an extraordinary expedition on his own account against the King of Naples and Sicily. This was the famous expedition of Garibaldi and his 1000 red-shirts, untrained men without proper arms or material, who met the trained armies pitched against them. The 1000 red-shirts were greatly outnumbered, but their enthusiasm and the goodwill of the populace led them from victory to victory. The fame of Garibaldi spread. Such was the magic of his name that armies melted away at his approach. Still his task was a difficult one, and many a time Garibaldi and his volunteers were on the verge of defeat and disaster. But even in the hour of defeat fortune smiled upon him, as it often does on desperate ventures, and turned defeat into victory.

  Garibaldi and the 1000 landed in Sicily. From there slowly they worked their way up to Italy. As he marched through the villages of South Italy, Garibaldi appealed for volunteers, and the rewards he offered them were unusual. “Come!” he said, “come! He who stays at home is a coward. I promise you weariness, hardship, and battles. But we will conquer or die.” Nothing succeeds like success. Garibaldi’s early successes whipped up the spirit of nationalism of the Italians. Volunteers poured in, and they marched north singing Garibaldi’s hymn:

  The tombs are uncovered, the dead come from far,

  The ghosts of our martyrs are rising to war,

  With swords in their hands, and with laurels of fame,

  And dead hearts still glowing with Italy’s name.

  Come join them! Come follow, O youth of our land!

  Come fling out our banner, and marshal our band!

  Come all with cold steel, and come all with hot fire,

  Come all with the flame of Italia’s desire!

  Begone from Italia, begone from our home!

  Begone from Italia, O stranger, begone.

  How similar are national songs everywhere!

  Cavour took advantage of Garibaldi’s successes, and the result ol all this was that Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont became King of Italy in 1861. Rome was still under French troops, Venice under the Austrians. Within ten years both Venice and Rome joined the rest of Italy, and Rome became the capital. Italy was at last one united nation. But Mazzini was not happy. All his life he had laboured for the republican ideal, and now Italy was but the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont. It is true that the new kingdom was a constitutional one and an Italian Parliament met at Turin immediately after Victor Emmanuel became king.

  So Italy, the nation, was united again and free from foreign rule. Three men brought this about—Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour—and perhaps if any one of these had not been there, the freedom would have been longer in coming. George Meredith, the English poet and novelist, wrote many years afterwards:

  We who have seen Italia in the throes,

  Half risen but to be hurled to the ground, and now,

  Like a ripe field of wheat where once drove plough

  All bounteous as she is fair, we think of those

  Who blew the breath of life into her frame:

  Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi: three:

  Her Brain, her Soul, her Sword; and set her free

  From ruinous discords, with one lustrous aim.

  I have told you briefly and in bold outline the story of the Italian struggle for freedom. This little account will read to you like any other bit of dead history. But I shall tell you how you can make this story live and fill yourself with the joy and anguish of the struggle. At least, so I felt when I was a boy at school, long, long ago, and I read the story in three books by Trevelyan—Garibaldi and the Fight for the Roman Republic, Garibaldi and the Thousand, and Garibaldi and the Making of Italy.

  At the time of the Italian struggle the English people sympathized with Garibaldi and his red-shirts, and many an English poet wrote stirring poetry about the fight. It is strange how the sympathies of the English often enough go out to struggling peoples provided their own interests are not involved. To Greece, fighting for freedom, they send the poet Byron and others, to Italy they send all good wishes and encouragement; but next door to them in Ireland, and farther away in Egypt and India and elsewhere, their messengers bring maxim-guns and destruction. Many a beautiful poem was written about Italy at the time by Swinburne and Meredith and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Meredith also wrote novels on this subject. I shall give you here a quotation from a poem of Swinburne, The Halt before Rome—written while the Italian struggle was going on and meeting with many a check, and many a traitor was serving alien masters.

  Gifts have your masters for giving,

  Gifts hath not Freedom to give;

  She without shelter or station,

  She beyond limit or bar,

  Urges to slumberless speed

  Armies that famish, that bleed,

  Sowing their lives for her seed,

  That their dust may rebuild her a nation,

  That their souls may relight her a star.

  128

  The Rise of Germany

  January 31, 1933

  In our last letter we saw the building up of one of the great European nations with which we are so familiar today. We shall now see the making of another great modern nation—Germany.

  In spite of a common language and many other common features, the German people continued to be split up into a large number of States, big and small. For many centuries Austria of the Hapsburgs was the leading German Po
wer. Then Prussia came to the front, and there was rivalry for the leadership of the German people between these two Powers. Napoleon humbled both of them. As a consequence of this, German nationalism gained strength and helped in his final defeat. Thus both in Italy and in Germany Napoleon, unconsciously and without wishing it, gave an impetus to the spirit of nationalism and ideas of freedom. One of the leading German nationalists of the Napoleonic period was Fichte, a philosopher, but also an ardent patriot who did much to rouse up his people.