History II / The Age of Revolutions II: 1848, Nationalism and Liberalism
Practice question · Multiple choice

Historians describe Italy and Germany as cases where the state produced the nation rather than the other way round. What kind of evidence supports that claim?

Hints
  1. Ask what happened to regional languages and local loyalties in the decades after the states were founded.
  2. The famous remark that Italy had been made and Italians still had to be points at exactly this.
Show the answer

B. Schools, conscription, railways and a standardised language spread national identity after unification, not before it

Why

The evidence is institutional and it is datable: literacy campaigns, a national curriculum, universal conscription mixing regions in one army, and rail networks that made a national market and a national press possible. Weber traced the same process in France, where a state far older than Italy was still nationalising its peasantry in the 1880s.

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