Post 4: Unit 4, Nationlism: From Concert to Competition

Recap: Nationalism is people belonging together as a nation because they share a history, culture, language, religion, or other events. The book says that nationalism is “a strong feeling of pride in and devotion to their country.” Before nationalism started, people had strong feelings of pride in a ruler or a family. Nationalism made them prideful of their country or nation. Nationalism started in Europe in the 1700s. England, France, and Spain had some sort of nationalism. Haiti got free from France in 1804 and Nationalism started in Germany early in the 1800s. When people have things in common, they want to develop their own culture and relationships. When it grows into a big group, like a country, they want to be their own nation. The impact to Europe was good and bad. Revolutions/wars broke out. Some nations wanted more land than what they had, so they started to try and take over other lands. The people fought back. If you resisted you were executed. Nationalism helps make your country unified and stronger and you can make your own laws. The Nationalism in Europe created a lot of new nations in Europe like Germany and Italy. With this pride came new rules and progress and growth with the economy, science, government and industry. The new nations had challenges too. Some people did not have any traditions or feel unified with their new nation. Nationalism made the old empires go down and the old monarchies began to go away. Russian became their own nation too. A lot of these countries used plays, music, ballet and other ways of showing the pride they had in their nation. We had a puppet play in class to help us understand better of nationalism.

Review:Reflect: I think that nationalism as an ideology is OK as long as you keep your ideas and opinions within your nation. Taking your nation’s ideas and trying to force them on other people is wrong and should not be allowed. We do not need any more wars. Nations should keep their ways to themselves and allow other countries to live the way they want to – not the way other want them to live. But every nation should have pride in themselves that when they see another national having problems like famine and poverty, they should help out and be proud of what they did.

Review of play: There is a father emperor who is dying and he has his son agree that he would not change anything after he is dead. The emperor doesn't want his country to develop - he wants them to stay the same. His people are starting to hear about nationalism, which is having your own country and being proud of it, having the same language and ways of life. The king hears about it and sends a spy to find out where his people are hearing about this. The people are tired of the king and living like he wants and they now want their own country and be free from the king. The people think they deserve their own country. The spy goes back and tells the emperor what he has heard and where it came from. When the king heard about it he wants to stop them because he would lose his power if that happened.

Nationalism can be used and help other societies because there are some societies that may not be happy with what they are doing right now. Like Afghanistan or Iraq. I am sure they are not happy with how their country is being run and used. Maybe once they are free of the bad people like the Taliban they can be proud of their country and start being who they want to be. The United States I think is trying to help other people become their own nation and I wish others would help out a little more where it isn’t all left up to us. If more of the countries had the kind of pride in themselves that we have, maybe the bad countries could be helped out more and we can give them the kind of ideas of being free and they would want to be more like us. We should all learn from each other.