During the nineteenth century, people came to identify themselves as part of a community called a nation. The forces that drew these people together were their common language, customs, cultural traditions, values, historical experiences, ethnicity, and sometimes religion. Nationalism was often a reaction against foreign rule, as mass politics resulted in the people of a country defining themselves in contrast to their ruling elite. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna sought to stifle nationalist movements in Italy and Germany that had been inspired by the ideas of the French Revolution.
Sometimes called the Springtime of the Peoples, the Revolutions of 1848 saw a series of uprisings throughout Europe. Reformers were dissatisfied with rising industrialization and with the conservative consensus that had dominated Europe since the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, Germany, and the Hapsburg Empire, they sought to unify their scattered countrymen under national banners. They also shared the goals of revolutionaries elsewhere in Europe of seeking democratic reforms. The revolutions, however, failed. Rather than reform, many governments increased repression. Many ex-revolutionaries fled to places like the United States, where they would work as activists in their new homelands. For example, one-tenth of the Union Army in the American Civil War consisted of German-born immigrants politically opposed to slavery.
On the Italian peninsula, the Roman Catholic Church still exerted great influence and discouraged the growth of Italian nationalism. The pope himself personally held large estates in central Italy. Under the leadership of Garibaldi in the south, young men pushed for an Italian nation, fighting a military campaign to unite the people behind this idea. In the north, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, the prime minister to King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia, aligned with France and expelled Austria from northern Italy. In 1871, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, and Sardinia's king was chosen as its ruler.
Farther north, the Kingdom of Prussia became more powerful after the defeat of Napoleon. The chancellor of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, envisioned a united Germany. So, he engineered a series of conflicts with Denmark and Austria to consolidate the territory required. Bismarck eventually manipulated France into declaring war on Prussia, and used this conflict as a pretext for gathering then-separate German domains together to fight as one. The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) was a resounding victory for Prussia, and Bismarck proclaimed the birth of the German nation. He did so in the French palace at Versailles, further humiliating France by taking the territory of Alsace-Lorraine on the Franco-German border. The latter would be an important factor in the outbreak of hostilities between France and Germany in World War I.
The birth of a unified Germany caused a significant shift in the balance of power in Europe. France was in decline, and Germany now rivaled Great Britain as an industrial producer and leader in technology. German military strength and diplomacy contributed to its position in Europe.
The new German nation was in many ways deeply conservative in its politics. Bismarck, however, supported a series of reforms that robbed domestic left-wing opponents of causes that might galvanize larger movements. He established state pensions and public health insurance plans that protected the social welfare of the masses.
The existence of minority groups conflicted with the nationalist concept of a singular ethnic and religious identity. One such group was the Jewish people. They lived as a minority in many European nations as a result of the Jewish diaspora—the cultural and physical dispersion of Jews since the time of the Roman Empire. Antisemitism increased over the nineteenth century, as burgeoning nationalist identities strengthened traditional prejudice toward Jews and Judaism. In reaction to this antisemitism, the Zionist movement arose. Like other nationalist movements, it sought to establish a state for one people, in this case for the Jews. A Jewish reporter, Theodor Herzl, launched the movement in 1897. Zionism successfully created the independent state of Israel in 1948.
By the 1830s, most of Latin America was made up of independent nations, which had been established by revolutions against their respective colonial governments. These new nations faced many problems, such as economies that had been disrupted by many years of warfare and large armies loyal to regional commanders (caudillos) instead of to the new national governments. Additionally, the role of the Catholic Church remained strong. Few questioned its doctrines, but many wanted to limit its role in civil life. In Mexico, for example, politics was a struggle between conservatives and liberals, and instability and financial difficulty made it a target for foreign intervention by the United States and Europe.