Bismarck detached German nationalism from its liberal revolutionary roots.

Evidence

Bismarck… realized that, despite the setback of 1848–1849, German liberalism and nationalism supported by Austria were still a serious threat to Prussian particularism and Prussian aristocratic privilege… . Liberalism was fatal to the social order for which Bismarck stood; but nationalism, carefully handled, could be made to subserve the purposes of Prussia… . He separated German national aspirations from the liberal background which, from 1813 to 1848 and in centuries past, had given them meaning. Nationalism had grown strong as an instrument of liberal reform, as an essential means of breaking the stranglehold of particularist interest over the German people… . [H]e offered the German people unity, but at the expense of the radical reform which alone made unity worth while. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 327

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Parallels how ruling classes elsewhere co-opt and hollow out radical national traditions.

Related

• Bismarck severed German nationalism from its liberal-reformist origins (similarity 0.96)
• Bismarck weaponized nationalism by separating it from its liberal grounding (similarity 0.95)
• German industrialization made radical reform feel less urgent, easing Bismarck’s path. (similarity 0.86)
• Marx and Engels’ German nationalism skewed their judgment of Slavic liberation movements. (similarity 0.83)
• Nationalism subverted socialism and overtook capitalist development worldwide (similarity 0.83)
• Marx and Engels judged the German national movement’s anti-French instinct correct. (similarity 0.83)
• German economic prosperity made radical reform seem less urgent (similarity 0.82)
• Marx and Engels judged other national movements by German national interests (similarity 0.82)
• German nationalism worked against revolutionary consciousness in 1860s (similarity 0.82)
• Marx and Engels’ German nationalism was distorted by exile and ideology (similarity 0.81)
• Marxism’s economism forced the conclusion that nationalism was a backward, diversionary ideology. (similarity 0.80)
• Marxian economism led Marxists to dismiss nationalism as backward ideology. (similarity 0.80)
• Engels held that capitalism favored some nations’ boundaries and not others’. (similarity 0.80)
• Marx and Engels judged nationalism by its service to industrial capital (similarity 0.80)
• Marx’s theories of democracy and nation formed in response to the 1848-49 defeats (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Marx and Engels judged the German national movement’s anti-French instinct correct. #corroborates (0.40) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 330