The turning point occurred in the late 1840s, when, for similar but unrelated domestic political purposes, European politicians seized on the idea of national self-determination as the key element underpinning a program of political reform.* This idea was antithetical to the Vienna system and cast doubt on the legitimacy of that system. Challenges to the system's program of strategic restraint further discredited the Vienna system. The Crimean War, the Italian wars, the unification of Italy, but most especially the unification of Germany were ever escalating challenges to the Vienna Concert that arose from the campaigns for popular sovereignty, so that by the last of these conflicts, in 1870, the state-nation in Europe was in rapid retreat.
It may seem to us today altogether natural that states should occupy fixed and contiguous places on maps, but that, as we have seen, was not always the common conception. And it may also seem obvious that the geographical division of the world into states should fit the division of mankind into nations. But this too was not always so. As H. G. Wells put it, that the political world should be divided into nation-states, and that this must be so in order to ensure stability,
would seem to be self-evident propositions were it not that the diplomatists at Vienna evidently neither believed nor understood anything of the sort, and thought themselves free to carve up the world as one is free to carve up such a boneless structure as a cheese.68
One could argue—as indeed Castlereagh did as a young man when he voted to disband the Irish parliament—that the coincidence of political boundaries with ethnic ones is actually a recipe for conflict. Nevertheless, it became a common belief among very different societies after the upheavals of 1848 that governments existed to better the lot of national peoples. Some have argued that this shift to welfare nationalism was a conscious strategy on the part of ruling elites to distract the masses from the exploitative practices of the industrial age. There is doubtless some truth in this, but nationalism was itself also a motivating factor among revolutionaries, and, in any case, that it was a card effectively played by politicians in several very different circumstances does not tell us why it proved so effective and transformative.
During 1848, Poles, Danes, Germans, Italians, Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, and Romanians rose in arms, claiming the right of self-government. In February, a revolution occurred in France, and one of the great powers suddenly appeared to have taken up the cause of popular nationalism against the Vienna system. In March the French foreign minister declared that the new French Republic did not recognize the peace treaties of 1815 and would defend by force the rights of oppressed nationalities against any aggressor. This pledge was not immediately fulfilled, but a new leader emerged who was able to exploit sentiment in Europe for the nation-state and the self-determination of peoples. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the Emperor Napoleon, was elected president of the Republic by universal suffrage in December 1848. Barred by the constitution from a second term, he mounted a coup d'état in December 1851. A fresh plebiscite was held on a new constitution; 7.5 million persons voted yes, against 650,000 voting no, with 1.5 million abstentions. The seizure of constitutional power had been legitimated by an appeal to the people.
The use of the plebiscite to ratify changes in the constitution had been previously initiated by Napoleon I, but the differences in the two occasions are illuminating.
When Napoleon I used the plebiscite, he was attempting to legitimate his own role within a revolutionary state; when he sought to legitimate his role vis-á-vis other states, by contrast, he had himself crowned emperor by the pope. When Louis Napoleon resorted to the plebiscite, he first used it to legitimate a new constitution, and later in 1852 in order to confer the title of emperor and to make this title hereditary. In other words, Napoleon III (as Louis Napoleon then became) employed the plebiscite to legitimate not only his role, but the new role of the State itself. Moreover, the universal suffrage of Napoleon III, vastly larger than that called upon by Napoleon I, not only ratified constitutional changes, but was also the basis for legislative elections. The use of the national referendum to determine the constitutional status of a state is more than anything else the watermark of the nation-state. For on what basis other than popular sovereignty and nationalism can the mere vote of a people legitimate its relations with others? It is one thing to suppose that a vote of the people legitimates a particular policy or ruler; this implies that, within a state, the people of that state have a say in the political direction of the state. It is something else altogether to say that a vote of the people legitimates a state within the society of states. That conclusion depends on not simply a role for self-government, but a right of self-government. It is the right of which Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg.
Napoleon III desired to break out of the Vienna system, which he perceived, with some justice, as having been built to confine French ambitions, and he wished to invigorate the principle of national self-determination, which he believed, with somewhat less justification, to have been the guiding ideology of his late uncle. Accordingly, he carefully chose the place where he would confront the system: not Belgium nor the Rhineland nor the Italian states. Aggression against these states could be justified on grounds of frustrated nationalism, but such an attack would have united the Concert against him. Rather he chose to move against the Ottoman Empire. As Gildea has shrewdly concluded, the “Empire could be used safely as a laboratory for testing the principle of nationalities, and the precedent could then be applied to other parts of Europe.”69
The ten million Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire came under the protection of the tsar. But there were Roman Catholic Christians in the empire as well, mainly in Lebanon, where French missionary efforts had been steadily increasing their numbers throughout the 1840s. Napoleon III seized on this issue and demanded that the Ottoman governor remove the keys to the Holy Places from the Orthodox patriarch and give them to Catholic clergy, and further that a Latin patriarchate be established in Jerusalem. When the Ottoman authorities acceded to these ultimata, Russia responded by insisting on guarantees for Balkan Orthodox Christians, whose national movements the Russians had begun to aid. In July, the tsar moved forces into the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Finally war broke out between Turkey and Russia, and in November 1853, the Turkish fleet was destroyed off the southern coast of the Black Sea. Napoleon III seized this opportunity to propose an alliance with Britain to prevent Russia from driving the Ottoman Empire from the Dardenelles and thus opening the Mediterranean to Russian fleets. Great Britain pledged to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
In Britain, public opinion ran high against Russia. Although the Aberdeen cabinet was disposed to do nothing, its most formidable member, Lord Palmerston, resigned on the issue and took his case to the public. He was returned on a wave of popular feeling in favor of war. An alliance was concluded with France, and a combined fleet was sent to the Black Sea in January 1854.
Palmerston's strategic objectives were by no means confined to simply opposing Russia over the straits. In a secret memorandum he prepared for the cabinet in March 1854, he wrote of the Russian empire's
dismemberment. Finland would be restored to Sweden, the Baltic provinces would go to Prussia, and Poland would become a sizable kingdom. Austria would renounce her Italian possessions but gain the Danubian principalities and possibly even Bessarabia in return, and the Ottoman Empire would regain the Crimea and Georgia.70
Such a program appealed to Napoleon III's desire to inflame Polish, Romanian, and Italian nationalism, but it required a total military defeat of the Russians, which France could not afford: to lose Russia completely would sacrifice important protection France might need against Prussia. The hazards of destroying the Vienna system began to dawn on French policymakers.71
In September 1855 Sevastopol fell to the British and French. Palmerston, who had become prime minister the preceding February, was eager to press the attack, but he was also fearful of a separate peace b
etween France and Russia. Finally he gave in to the rest of the cabinet and to the views of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and concluded a peace treaty. The terms were harsh: Russia lost her protectorate over the Danubian principalities, as well as about a third of Bessarabia. These areas became the state of Romania, the formation of which markedly increased the intensity of nationalist sentiment in other Balkan states. The provision that no warships could traverse the straits in peacetime was extended to the entire Black Sea.
Russia's defeat completed her constitutional transition to a state-nation. Because service in the army was rewarded by emancipation, serfs had to be recruited for long periods; otherwise, the number of those bound to the land would have plummeted. Thus recruitment provided only about 700,000 men. There was no reserve. Such measures did not fill the needs of contemporary warfare, which required universal, short-term conscription, followed by service in the reserve. An adequate system, however, would move all serfs through the army in a generation. Therefore modern conscription and reserve service meant the emancipation of the serfs. And this is precisely what happened, in yet another example of strategic imperatives flowing back into the constitutional structure that strategy is supposed to serve. In 1861 the serfs were freed; universal military service followed in 1874. Six years' active service and a nine-year reserve commitment created a total force of 1.35 million. Various other efforts were made to focus the energies of the entire nation on service to the state. Thus evolving, Russia entered a period from which most of the great powers were just emerging; it would take another military catastrophe, in 1916, to bring a nation-state into being.
With the successful conclusion of the Crimean War, Napoleon III moved from being a mere egoist to becoming the most prominent personage in Europe. Ever mindful of his public, he next turned to Italy, where the strategic objectives of France could again be married to the support of local nationalist sentiments. In 1859, France intervened in Italy after Napoleon III concluded a secret agreement with Cavour, the Piedmontese prime minister, providing that the kingdom of Piedmont would be extended into a Kingdom of Upper Italy to include Lombardy, Venetia, and the Romagna. France would receive Nice and Savoy. A Kingdom of Central Italy, composed of Tuscany, Parma, Modena, Umbria, and the Marches, would be given to Napoleon's cousin, Prince Napoleon. As with the French demands against the Ottoman Empire, French intrigue had singled out another vulnerable multinational state-nation: the Austrian empire.
Fighting broke out in April, most of the warfare taking place between French and Austrian forces. The battles of Magenta and Solferino were actually French victories, not those of the Piedmontese or Italian volunteers. The decision to cease fire was also French, and an agreement was signed between Napoleon III and the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph on July 11, 1859. This truce clearly sacrificed Italian nationalism to French ambitions. Lombardy was given to Piedmont but Venetia remained with the Austrians. Nothing was said of the French agreement with Cavour. The settlement ignited a firestorm of reaction among the Italians, who had not been consulted. Cavour resigned his premiership. Assemblies called by Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the Papal Legations* met and requested annexation by the kingdom of Piedmont.
At first Napoleon III demurred and fell back on a call for a European congress to settle the question of central Italy. This approach might have strengthened the system of collective security in Europe, but then, in December, he changed course. Relying on Britain, where Palmerston and his foreign secretary, Lord John Russell, supported the principle of self-determination, Napoleon III renewed the agreement between France and Piedmont. Cavour returned to power in less than a month.
Piedmont annexed the Duchies and the Legations and promptly organized a plebiscite, based on universal suffrage, held in March 1860. The Piedmontese king, Victor Emmanuel, took over the new territories by decree. Elections to a single Italian parliament were held in Piedmont-Sardinia, Lombardy, the Duchies, and the Legations. The first task of this legislature was to ratify the annexations to Piedmont as well as those to France. The French annexations of Nice and Savoy had been similarly endorsed by local plebiscites.
The French annexations, however, had enraged the Italian partisan leader Garibaldi (a native of Nice) and other Italian revolutionaries, and he mounted an insurrection in Sicily in April. The success of this insurrection, which was quickly joined by discontented peasants recruited by promises of land reform, prompted Cavour to dispatch officials to prepare plebiscites for annexation in the newly liberated areas. These officials Garibaldi expelled or avoided. When Garibaldi marched on Naples, Cavour planned a pre-emptive coup, but this failed, and Garibaldi entered Naples in September.
Fearful of losing the leadership of the emerging unification movement to Garibaldi's partisans, Piedmont sent forces into the Papal States and defeated a Catholic army at Castelfidardo in mid-September. When Bourbon forces in the south began to gain ground against Garibaldi, the latter called on Piedmont for assistance. This permitted Cavour to announce to the parliament on October 2, 1860, that the revolution was at an end. Sicily and Naples were annexed after a plebiscite by universal suffrage on October 21.
Italian unification was not quite complete. French troops remained in Rome, kept there by conservative pressure on Napoleon III, and it was not until the German victory at Sedan in 1870 that they were finally withdrawn. Nevertheless, without French determination to drive Austria from Italy, unification would not have happened at this time. Whether it was wise of Napoleon III to accomplish this is open to question; by weakening Austria, he removed the strongest check on Prussian ambitions to unify Germany, a development that could only threaten France in the long run. Moreover, France—with the enthusiastic if passive collaboration of the British—had dealt a severe blow to the Vienna system. By relying on a national insurrection to destroy the forces of a great power, these states had ignored the ominous predictions of Castlereagh about a general war. In so doing, these state-nations, and the society of such states, had begun to give way to the nation-state. There is some evidence that the leadership in these states perhaps believed they had found in the ideology of popular sovereignty and national aspirations a way of preserving their own states from revolt. After 1870 the greatest of the nation-state builders, Bismarck, made clear to all what had happened. As Michael Doyle has insightfully observed:
Leadership could win nationalism over to the state… and when revolution and nationalism were no longer synonymous, war could be fought on a wave of national feeling that, to everyone's surprise, did not ignite liberal revolution. The tiger of the nation-state did, however, require lavish feeding. Provinces and people could no longer be treated casually as the chips in dynastic politics, they were the children of the nation. Thus as war became more efficient, unleashing the power of the whole people, so peace became more difficult.72
But in 1860, at the conclusion of the Italian wars, this was not obvious to all observers. The most that could be said was that the rules of the Concert had been tested in the Crimea—an “out-of-area” problem, so to speak, as the Concert did not strictly apply beyond Europe or include the Ottoman Empire—and had been abandoned in the Italian peninsula apparently without the dire consequences of which Castlereagh had warned. The Crimean War alone, however, caused more deaths than any other European conflict between 1815 and 1914. Moreover, within eleven years of the conclusion of the Italian War, three major wars were fought in Europe: the war between Denmark and the German states in 1864; the Austro-Prussian war of 1866; and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. As a consequence a new nation-state was forged and a new society of states eventually came into being, with a new sort of question at the center of every member state: which political system best improved the welfare of the national people?
The construction of the new nation-state of Germany occurred when Prussia was able to conquer and annex the other members of the German federation, excluding Austria. Although it is commonly said, by Kissinger73 among others, that the peace of Vienna lasted
until 1914 because no general war broke out until then, the wars by which Germany was unified virtually destroyed the Vienna System and with it the system of consensus as to the legitimacy of the state-nations that were its constituents. German unification was made possible, first, by the reform of the Prussian military that moved Prussia from a territorial state to a state-nation. This was primarily accomplished under the leadership of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. Second, this state-nation was made the political and diplomatic leader of a national movement to unite the German people, ultimately transforming its constitutional basis and its strategic objectives into those of a nation-state. This effort was led by Otto von Bismarck and Helmuth von Moltke.
The transformation of warfare by Napoleon I and the state-nation had been fully appreciated by Prussian analysts, who were well aware that new methods of war and the preparation for war would have a profound social and political impact on Prussian society. The army of Frederick the Great had been a force of professionals isolated from the rest of society, ruled by iron discipline, and led by officers drawn solely from the nobility. To transform this army into that of a state-nation, Prussia undertook universal conscription of a more radical type than had previously been attempted anywhere.
Conscription had been adopted in most of the other countries in Europe as each transformed itself into a state-nation, and put its nation in arms. In every country outside Prussia, however, this amounted to the drafting of the poor because substitutes for service could be hired. In Prussia, however, all groups in the population were required actually to serve. This provided enormous manpower; it made the army into a true citizens' armed force; it made possible the strategic and tactical innovations urged by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and their successor, Moltke. Most importantly, it set up a constitutional conflict between liberal, decentralizing parliamentary elements that wished to maintain the voluntary militia and Prussian royalist military groups that intended to use the new standing army to create a pan-Germany in the image of Prussia.
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