(a) How did the decade of the 1830s bring great difficulties to Europe? Explain.

(i) The 1830s were years of great economic hardship in Europe.

(ii) The first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in population all over Europe.

(iii) In most countries there were more seekers of jobs than employment.

(iv) Population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums.

(v) Small producers in towns were often faced with stiff competition from imports of cheap machine-made goods from England, where industrialisation was more advanced than on the continent.

(vi) In those regions of Europe where the aristocracy still enjoyed power, peasants struggled under the burden of feudal dues and obligations.

(vii) The rise of food prices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in town and country

(b) How did Romanticism contribute to the development of nationalism in Europe in the early 19th century? Explain.

(i) Romanticism was a cultural movement which sought to develop a particular form of nationalist sentiment.

(ii) Romantic artists and poets generally criticised the glorification of reason and science and focused instead on emotions, intuition and mystical feelings.

(iii) Their effort was to create a sense of a shared collective heritage, a common cultural past, as the basis of a nation.

(iv) German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder ($\displaystyle 1744$-$\displaystyle 1803$) claimed that true German culture was to be discovered among the common people – das volk.

(v) It was through folk songs, folk poetry and folk dances that the true spirit of the nation (volksgeist) was popularised.

(vi) Karol Kurpinski, for example, celebrated the national struggle through his operas and music, turning folk dances like the polonaise and mazurka into nationalist symbols.

(vii) The Grimm brothers considered their projects of collecting folktales and developing the German language as part of the wider effort to oppose French domination and create a German national identity.