The relationship between liberalism and nationalism has been one of the most consequential and contentious dynamics in European political history. Emerging from the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment and the Romantic reaction, these two ideologies have alternately reinforced and clashed with one another, shaping revolutions, state-building projects, imperial collapses, and the contemporary architecture of the European Union. While liberalism champions individual rights, constitutional rule, and open societies, nationalism grounds sovereignty in a shared culture, language, and historical destiny. Their interaction is not a simple story of convergence or opposition; it is a perennial negotiation between the universal aspirations of human freedom and the particular loyalties of collective identity.

Origins of Liberalism and Nationalism

Liberalism as a systematic doctrine arose in the 17th and 18th centuries, nurtured by thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, and later John Stuart Mill. It stood against absolute monarchy, religious intolerance, and mercantilist controls, advocating for natural rights, representative government, and free markets. The American and French Revolutions transformed these ideals into political practice, embedding them in constitutions that limited state power and protected personal liberties. Central to the liberal vision was the notion that legitimate authority flows from the consent of rational individuals, not from hereditary privilege or divine mandate. For an in-depth discussion of this tradition, readers may consult the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on liberalism.

Nationalism, though drawing on older ethnic and dynastic loyalties, gained its modern ideological shape in the early 19th century. Whereas liberalism emphasized the abstract individual, nationalism turned to the community defined by language, folklore, territory, and a presumed common heritage. The German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder celebrated the unique Volksgeist of each people, arguing that cultural difference was to be treasured rather than erased. In France, Ernest Renan later redefined the nation as a “daily plebiscite,” blending civic voluntarism with historical memory. Unlike liberalism’s universalist horizon, nationalism rooted political legitimacy in a particular collective self that existed prior to any social contract. Its intellectual journey is well documented by the Britannica entry on nationalism.

From the outset, this philosophical divergence carried practical implications. Liberals sought to dismantle traditional hierarchies and create a society of autonomous individuals; nationalists aimed to awaken a political consciousness among people who saw themselves as a single cultural unit. Where these aims overlapped—as in the struggle against foreign domination—nationalism could present itself as a vehicle for liberal emancipation. Where they differed, the tension between individual rights and collective destiny became starkly apparent.

Early Interactions and Conflicts

The Revolutions of 1848 provide the most dramatic illustration of the early interplay between liberal and nationalist aspirations. Across the Italian states, the German Confederation, the Habsburg lands, and France, crowds demanded constitutional government, freedom of the press, and national unification or independence. In Frankfurt, the liberal National Assembly sought to draft a constitution for a unified Germany while simultaneously proclaiming fundamental rights. In Hungary, Lajos Kossuth combined demands for parliamentary rule with national autonomy within the Habsburg Empire. The common slogan of the hour was “liberty and nationality.”

Yet 1848 also exposed the fault lines. In the Habsburg domains, liberal German and Hungarian patriots often refused to extend the same rights to Slavic populations, revealing a hierarchy of nations within the revolutionary camp. The Frankfurt Parliament’s debate over the borders of a future Germany—whether to include Austrian lands or draw a “smaller” Germany under Prussian leadership—showed how national questions could paralyze liberal constitutional efforts. As reactionary forces regrouped, the revolutions were crushed, but the memory of this fleeting alliance left an enduring mark. A concise overview of these upheavals can be found at Britannica’s article on the Revolutions of 1848.

The Unification Projects: Liberalism in Service to the Nation

Italy

Italian unification, or the Risorgimento, initially appeared as a triumph of liberal principles. Count Camillo di Cavour, the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, was a pragmatic liberal who promoted free trade, secularization, and constitutional monarchy. He skillfully used diplomacy and limited warfare to unite the peninsula under the House of Savoy, appealing to Italian patriots who wanted an end to Austrian rule and the petty absolutisms of the old duchies. Giuseppe Garibaldi’s volunteer army embodied the romantic fusion of popular sovereignty and national destiny. The unified Kingdom of Italy adopted a liberal constitution, and the early decades saw the extension of suffrage and civil liberties.

Nevertheless, the marriage of liberalism and nationalism in Italy was uneasy. The new state’s leaders were often more concerned with consolidating power than with fostering genuine pluralism. The southern question, the suppression of regional identities, and the later drift toward authoritarianism under Crispi and eventually Mussolini illustrated how a nationalist project could hollow out liberal institutions from within. The very tools used to forge the nation—centralization, militarism, and the cult of the state—pushed against liberal restraint.

Germany

German unification under Otto von Bismarck is an even starker example of nationalism co-opting liberal means for illiberal ends. Bismarck was no liberal; he was a conservative Prussian Junker who detested parliamentary supremacy. Yet he astutely harnessed liberal enthusiasm for national unity after the failure of 1848. By engineering wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, he rallied nationalist sentiment around the Prussian crown. The resulting German Empire of 1871 included a Reichstag elected by universal male suffrage—a progressive concession that Bismarck calculated would strengthen central authority while undermining particularist loyalties. The liberal bourgeoisie, dazzled by the national achievement, largely acquiesced to the authoritarian features of the new state.

The story of German unification reveals a pattern that would recur in European history: liberalism’s willingness to compromise its core tenets in exchange for national greatness. The Reichstag possessed real legislative power, but ultimate authority lay with the Kaiser and his chancellor. The Kulturkampf against Catholics and the anti-socialist laws further showed how the nation-state could become a vehicle for illiberal coercion. A detailed account of these events is available at Britannica’s entry on German unification.

Multi-Ethnic Empires and the Fragmentation of Liberal Reform

Austria-Hungary

In the Habsburg Empire, the relationship between liberalism and nationalism was one of chronic failure. After the shock of 1848, the neo-absolutist regime of Franz Joseph tried to impose a centralizing, German-speaking bureaucracy. Later, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 created a dual monarchy, granting Hungary extensive autonomy under a liberal parliament and recognizing two dominant nations. This arrangement, however, denied meaningful self-government to Czechs, Poles, Croats, Romanians, and other Slavic peoples. The liberal elements within the empire, concentrated among the German and Magyar bourgeoisie, proved incapable of devising a federal structure that would satisfy national aspirations without tearing the state apart. As ethnic parties grew in strength, parliamentary paralysis became the norm. By the eve of World War I, the empire’s liberal experiment had been hollowed out by nationalist irredentism, culminating in the assassination at Sarajevo and the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918.

The Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire faced a similar dilemma. The Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century introduced liberal concepts of equality before the law, secular courts, and representative bodies, aiming to modernize the state and create an “Ottoman” civic identity that transcended religious and ethnic divisions. Yet the rise of Balkan nationalism, first among the Greeks and later the Serbs, Bulgarians, and others, demonstrated the fragility of an imperial patriotism that had few cultural roots. Liberal Ottoman reformers often found themselves caught between demands for decentralization from Christian subjects and a Turkish nationalist backlash that viewed liberal concessions as a threat to the empire’s core. The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 restored the constitution and briefly revived hopes for a pluralist Ottomanism, but the Balkan Wars and World War I tipped the balance toward ethnic nationalism, culminating in the tragic violence against Armenians and the empire’s partition.

World Wars and the Crisis of Liberal Nationalism

The First World War profoundly altered the relationship between liberalism and nationalism. In its opening months, nationalist fervor swept across Europe, drowning out the fragile internationalism that many liberals had advocated. The war was justified on all sides as a defense of the nation, and liberal states such as Britain and France suspended civil liberties, imposed conscription, and embraced propaganda. Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points later reintroduced a liberal vision for the postwar order, coupling national self-determination with democratic government and a League of Nations. The redrawing of borders in Central and Eastern Europe created a patchwork of nation-states that were ostensibly liberal democracies. However, the interwar period quickly demonstrated how the principle of self-determination, divorced from robust liberal institutions, could generate ethnic exclusion, minority oppression, and territorial disputes.

The rise of fascism and Nazism represented the most radical repudiation of liberal values in the name of the nation. These movements fused biological racism with a mystical cult of national rebirth, glorifying violence and suppressing all opposition. Liberalism was portrayed as weak, decadent, and incapable of protecting the nation’s interests. The Second World War, therefore, was a cataclysmic struggle not merely between states but between radically opposed visions of the relationship between individual and community. The defeat of the Axis powers allowed western Europe to rebuild on a foundation of liberal democracy, human rights, and international cooperation, yet the experience of occupation and resistance had also reinforced national identities in powerful ways.

Postwar Reconstruction and the European Project

After 1945, western European nations channeled nationalist energies into a dual commitment: the reconstruction of domestic welfare states and the construction of supranational institutions. The European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the European Union, was an explicit attempt to tame nationalism by pooling sovereignty over the very industries needed for war. Liberal democracy became the norm, anchored by constitutional courts, free elections, and a growing body of human rights law through the European Convention on Human Rights. The Cold War added a further dimension: liberal values were contrasted with Soviet communism, strengthening a Western identity that was simultaneously civic and defensive. Figures like Charles de Gaulle could champion national independence while upholding democratic governance, illustrating that a moderated nationalism could coexist with liberal institutions.

Yet even during these decades, the tension did not disappear. The process of decolonization revealed the limits of liberal universalism, as France and Britain struggled to reconcile their republican ideals with the national pride attached to their imperial holdings. The student movements of 1968 and the later rise of regional nationalism (in Scotland, Catalonia, and the Basque Country) challenged the centralized nation-state model, demanding self-determination in ways that both drew upon and critiqued liberal principles.

The Return of Unbridled Nationalism: The late 20th Century

The collapse of communism after 1989 unleashed a new wave of nationalist agitation, most violently in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. In the former Yugoslavia, the multi-ethnic state that had been held together by authoritarian rule disintegrated into ethnic conflict as political entrepreneurs like Slobodan Milošević exploited nationalist grievances. Liberal ideals of minority rights and peaceful coexistence were trampled as Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia descended into ethnic cleansing and genocide. The international community’s belated intervention through NATO and the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia underscored the need to subordinate ethnic sovereignty to universal human rights, but the wounds were deep. An overview of this tragic period is available at Britannica’s article on the Yugoslav Wars.

In the same decade, western Europe witnessed the gradual rise of populist nationalist parties. The Front National in France, the Lega Nord in Italy, and the Freedom Party of Austria were early harbingers of a politics that combined anti-immigrant rhetoric with attacks on the liberal elite and the European Union. These movements exploited anxieties about globalization, cultural change, and the erosion of national sovereignty, painting themselves as the true defenders of the people against a cosmopolitan class.

Contemporary Dynamics: The New Contestation

The current European landscape is defined by an acute tension between the liberal internationalist ethos of the EU and the resurgence of nationalist sentiment expressed most dramatically by Brexit in 2016. The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union was a vivid demonstration of how national sovereignty can override decades of economic and political integration when voters feel that their identity and control over their laws are at stake. The slogan “Take back control” resonated precisely because it invoked a vision of the nation as the ultimate source of democratic legitimacy, a claim that liberal technocrats in Brussels seemed to deny.

Across the continent, the migrant crisis of 2015 and subsequent security concerns have given further ammunition to nationalist parties. Hungary under Viktor Orbán has openly embraced “illiberal democracy,” arguing that the nation-state must protect its Christian heritage against multiculturalism. Poland’s Law and Justice party has clashed with EU institutions over judicial independence, framing the conflict as a defense of national sovereignty against foreign interference. In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National continues to gain ground by opposing supranational governance and advocating strict immigration controls. Even in traditionally liberal Scandinavia, parties like the Sweden Democrats have entered the mainstream.

At the same time, liberal advocates of the European project insist that the answer to 21st-century challenges—climate change, digital privacy, economic inequality, and geopolitical competition—cannot be found in a return to the nation-state. They argue that individual rights and open societies require the pooling of sovereignty, and that nationalism in its more aggressive forms inevitably leads to xenophobia and conflict. The EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, which involves shared debt and conditionality, represents a bold liberal attempt to deepen integration and thereby counteract centrifugal forces. Yet the resistance it encounters from so-called “frugal” states and eurosceptic movements shows that the debate remains deeply unsettled.

The current war in Ukraine further complicates the picture. Liberal states have rallied in defense of a sovereign nation’s right to self-determination, invoking both national heroism and universal values. Ukrainian resistance is portrayed simultaneously as a fight for the nation and for democratic freedoms, creating a potent fusion of liberalism and nationalism that echoes the revolutions of 1848. Whether this alliance will prove durable or collapse into the familiar contradictions of the past remains to be seen.

Conclusion

The historical trajectory of liberalism and nationalism in Europe is a record of mutual dependence and mutual subversion. Liberalism provided the language of representative government that nationalist movements used to challenge empires and dynasties. Nationalism offered a sense of belonging and popular mobilization that gave liberal reforms a cutting edge. Yet the same nationalist fervor has repeatedly devoured the liberal institutions that sought to channel it, privileging collective identity over individual rights and ethnic purity over civic inclusion. The European Union embodies the most ambitious attempt to transcend this dilemma, embedding national sovereignty in a supranational framework that protects fundamental rights. Its current struggles, however, prove that the tension between the universal claims of liberalism and the particular demands of the nation has not been resolved. Understanding this intricate interplay is essential for anyone seeking to navigate the political currents that continue to shape Europe.