Question

How did nationalism-which drove Hungary to demand its own parliamentary self-rule from the Austrian Empire-finally lead to the failure of Hungary to adequately govern itself

Answer 1

Recall briefly the events of 1848 in France and Germany. In February, the restored French monarchy was overthrown. In France, the political revolution was a result of commercial change: it expressed demands for better political and economic conditions by an emerging, prosperous, urban middle class and to a lesser degree by urban factory workers. The Liberal agenda of the middle class soon clashed with the socialist agenda of the workers: bourgeois aspirations toward entrepreneurial freedom clashed with labor's demands for an end to poverty and the exploitation of workers by capitalists. Some of the principles of the revolution were sacrificed to achieve a new stable social order. In France, the Liberal middle class allied with the nationalist right to reject socialism in favor of Liberal capitalist economics and patriotic French nationalism.

The Revolution spread in March to the German states, where the same class issues (Liberalism vs. socialism) were at work, but here the ideal of nationalism had more importance. There was no united Germany in 1848, only a collection of miniature states. Unification was an important goal for German Liberals, who were tired of political weakness and backward commercial laws. In Germany, the middle class abandoned goals like representative government and political freedom, and accepted national unification under the leadership of conservative Prussia. Once again, as in France, mass patriotic nationalism replaced mass civil rights and liberties as the goal.