European nationalism in the nineteenth century seems to have picked up where religion had left off centuries before. This statement may sound provocative -- positing the state as a substitute for a God whose influence was waning -- but in reality it is possible to understand nineteenth-century nationalism in Europe as fundamentally a replay of earlier religious phenomena. In surveying the most salient manifestations of nationalism in the middle of the nineteenth century -- including German and Italian unifications, the formation of an independent Belgium, and the failure of Hungarian nationalism -- it is possible to see the statecraft as a reflection of an earlier European status quo in which dividing lines were largely religious rather than nationalistic. Combined with the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the ongoing Industrial Revolution, the old European status quo would be overturned by the end of the nineteenth century, essentially leaving nationalism as...
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