The Great War
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Nationalism is “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational” (Gove, 1993). At the beginning of the 19th century, people who shared the same culture and national interests frequently belonged to the minority in their states. The attempt to change this situation contributed a lot to the outbreak of World War I. The aim of the paper is to briefly show the contribution of nationalism to the outbreak of war and cover the propaganda influence on the average people’s mind.
Eastern question of Ottoman Empire, growing Slavic nationalism, Austro-Hungarian power insistence, and national radical powers on Balkans became of concerns for the Western Europe. Time of uniting into alliances has come. Analyzing the reasons of the war outbreak, it is impossible to exclude nationalism as one of the major ones. Though economical and military influence is obvious, no one can reject that Dual Alliance of Austria and Germany was based on similar language, origin, and culture. In the same way, Russian formed Serbian alliance. The national desire of the countries to expand their power to more territories and make accent on its uniqueness leaded to increasing growth of military forces, or so-called arm race. Each powerful country tended to expropriate new colonies and enhance navy. Unifying into blocks gave an opportunity to gain more control, but assassination of Ferdinand Franz provoked each evolved country to react and perform actions on the defense of its aligned country. Not a single country was going to face a war alone, and alliance system matched strength against strength. However, nationalism leaded to the situation where each of conflict powers considered itself superior and was convinced in resplendent rapid victory and end of the war. “The alliance system of blocks reflected the growing impact of public opinion on international relations. Statesmen had the ability to manipulate the newspaper images of allies as good and rivals as evil” (Kishlansky, Kishlansky, et al, 2008). Government twisted the public opinion using music, literature, posters, etc. For example, there were posters depicting usual people as part of war, showing families who saved food for army, or even women who promoted war. The government used national symbols as Uncle Sam to convince the American people to join the army. Propaganda focused on people’s emotions as well as nationalistic and patriotic feelings. Governments fabricated numbers of deaths choosing the data, which was more attractive to them to influence people’s mind. Thus, propaganda also made a great impact on fomenting of war, shielding with nationalist ideas and mottos.
In conclusion, we could say that in reality nationalism is one of the causes of the outbreak of Great War, regardless of whether it was artificially raised by statesmen or has been originally provoked by self-determination of ethnicity. Nevertheless, governments used these factors to reach their purposes that was followed by World War and millions of people’s death.
References
Gove, P. B. (1993). Webster's third new international dictionary of the English language, unabridged. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Kishlansky, M. A., Kishlansky, M. A., Geary, P. J., Geary, P. J., Brien, P., & Brien, P. (2008). Civilization in the west (7th ed.). New York, NY: HarperCollins College Publishers.
