Page "Italian irredentism" Paragraph 11

Initially, the movement can be described as part of the more general nation-building process in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries when the multi-national Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires were being replaced by Nation States.

The Italian nation-building process can be compared to similar movements in Germany ( Großdeutschland ), Hungary, Serbia, and in pre-1914 Poland.

Simultaneously, however, in many parts of 19th century Europe, liberalism and nationalism were ideologies which were coming to the forefront of political culture.

In Eastern Europe, where the Habsburg Empire had long asserted control over a variety of ethnic and cultural groups, nationalism appeared in a standard format.

The beginning of the 19th century " was the period when the smaller, mostly indigenous nationalities of the empire-Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Ukrainians, Romanians-remembered their historical traditions, revived their native tongues as literary languages, reappropriated their traditions and folklore, in short reasserted their existence as nations.

" The notion of a single united Italy was related to the aspirations of the " majority populations ".