The Analysis of the Western History After 1700s

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Reviewing and analyzing Western History after the 1700s, it is necessary to discuss the issues of imperialism and national unification which led to dramatic changes in the map of the world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The eighteenth and nineteenth-century are called a peace period of a relative. There were no major European wars, except Napoleonic wars which involved and affected all of the European countries. European peoples were dissatisfied with the unfairness of their position, so they got a chance of being realized through a basic upheaval of the European. Continent, the Napoleonic wars were for some of them a great opportunity. Napoleon was a typical representative of what is called “imperialism”, but in several certain cases, he became a liberator.

Most of the Western European countries were conquered by France and they held a war of liberation against it. But in the case of Italy, Bonaparte, himself of Italian descent, replaced alien foreign masters that were governing this country. It might b said that it was a certain step to the national unification.

Napoleon was welcomed as a liberator in Poland which people wanted to hold the struggle for independence against Austrian and Russian conquers and, thus, get their national sovereignty.

Another part of Polish people welcomed Czar Alexander I, who seemed like a liberal governor. He was working on a project of a new European model, based upon justice and liberties for all nations. Czar was suggesting the restoration of Poland under himself. But the unification of Poland failed because of the Russian – Prussian cooperation.

The Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 divided Poland again, under France and Russia, but it was given its constitution which may be regarded as a means of the unification of the nation.

Talking about the conquest of Finland by Russia and Austria, it might be said that it tolerated somehow the rise of Finnish nationalism, but it included a certain danger of future Russification. Russia also annexed Bessarabia and Moldova in 1812.

Speaking of the Austrian Empire, it is necessary to mention that there was no liberation at all because its Illyrian provinces were conquered and annexed by the French Empire. The Republic of Ragusa lost its independence in 1805. But it is necessary to mention that during the French administration at these lands, the national movement of the peoples of Slovenes and Croats was welcomed and encouraged. It was developed within the community of all of the Southern Slavs.

Napoleon began his second Polish campaign in 1812, he promised to restore the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. Polish neighbors – Ukrainians had hopes of liberation from Russian rule. But Napoleon failed and the Russians occupied these territories again, they were under threat of a new partition because the 1813 Kalisz agreed between Russia and Prussia. The Poles remained to be convinced that some other war in Europe would bring them another chance for their national sovereignty and liberation. It can be pointed out that incorrect resolving of the Polish question was the failure of the Vienna Congress with the regard to European imperialism.

The Vienna Congress was supposed to reconstruct the general order in Europe after the previous revolutionary changes. The system of the European concert led to a lasting stabilization of the situation in Western Europe. The imperialistic Russian Empire cooperated with Prussia, was regarded as the main threat was the peace in Europe.

In the Polish case, the Vienna Congress which was inspired by huge imperialism not interested in the rise of modern nationalism, had to take into consideration this new trend, because the majority of peoples from the partitioned Polish commonwealth had a deep national consciousness.

There should be mentioned some cases connected to the rise of nationalism also regarded at the Vienna Congress. They were the German and Italian cases. Although their movements were not yet fully developed, they were aimed to reach political unification based on national grounds. German populations remained divided into several states under the foreign rule: Prussian and Austria.

Bohemia and Hungary lost their state and national rights because they were incorporated into the Austrian Empire. The German language and culture were represented as only one right unifying force of the multi-national empire, other nations’ cultural and national values and traditions were ignored.

Talking about Russian imperialism, it should be mentioned that non – Russian nationalities were ignored officially, except autonomous Finland. There were no national rights, no political freedom.

It must be also mentioned that the British protectorate was imposed in the Ionian Islands till the Balkan’s western where the Greek population remained under Venice’s rule. The Balkan Peninsula suffered under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. All these, centuries of oppression, caused the rise of nationalism in the territory of the Balkans.

As a conclusion, it must be outlined that the common identification of such notions as state and nation, mainly justified in the Western Europe history, actually leads to an ignorance of the key fact that in the region located between such giant countries as Germany and Russia, a lot of nations had lost its sovereignty political and cultural independence and, following these, their statehood. Some peoples had never actually succeeded in establishing and constituting their own independent and sovereign states.

Works Cited

Cortada, James N., and James W. Cortada. Can Democracy Survive in Western Europe?. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.

Harle, Vilho. The Enemy with a Thousand Faces: The Tradition of the Other in Western Political Thought and History. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000.

Columbia College. Chapters in Western Civilization. 3rd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.

Palmer, R. R. The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959.

“A REMARKABLE HOAX; Unmasking the 17th-Century Forgery That Was the Talk of Europe.” The Washington Times. 2005: B08.

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The Analysis of the Western History After 1700s

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