Guiseppe Mazzini: He was an Italian revolutionary who played a significant role in promoting the idea of a unified Italian state. He believed that nations were the natural units of mankind, and so Italy (which was then divided into a number of small states and kingdoms) had to be forged into a single unified republic. During the 1830s, he strived to put together a
coherent programme for such a unitary Italian Republic. He also set up two secret societies, namely Young Italy and Young Europe. These societies helped in the dissemination of his ideas.

Count Camillo de Cavour: Of the seven states of Italy, only Sardinia-Piedmont was ruled by an Italian princely house. When the revolutionary uprisings of 1831 and 1848 failed to unite Italy, the responsibility to establish a unified Italy fell upon this Italian state. King Victor Emmanuel II was its ruler and Cavour was the Chief Minister.  Cavour led the movement to unite the separate states of nineteenth-century Italy. He engineered a careful diplomatic alliance with France, which helped Sardinia-Piedmont defeat the Austrian forces in 1859, and thereby free the northern part of Italy from the Austrian Habsburgs. 

The Greek war of independence: This was a successful war of independence waged by  Greek revolutionaries between 1821 and 1829 against the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks were supported by the West European countries, while poets and artists hailed Greece as the cradle of European civilisation. Finally, the Treaty of Constantinople of 1832 recognised Greece as an  independent nation. 

Frankfurt parliament: It was an all-German National Assembly formed by the middle-class professionals, businessmen and prosperous artisans belonging to the different German regions. It was convened on 18 May, 1848 in the Church of St. Paul, in the city of Frankfurt. This assembly drafted a constitution for a German nation to be headed by a monarchy subject to a parliament. However, it faced opposition from the aristocracy and military. Also, as it was dominated by the middle classes, it lost its mass support base. In the end, it was forced to disband on 31 May, 1849. 

The role of women in nationalist struggles: Artistic representations of the French Revolution show men and women participating equally in the movement. Liberty is personified as a woman; also, liberal nationalism propounded the idea of universal suffrage, leading to women’s active participation in nationalist movements in Europe. Although women had
actively participated in nationalist struggles, they were given little or no political rights; an example being the Frankfurt parliament where women were admitted only as observers to stand in the visitors’ gallery. 

The French revolutionaries took many important steps to create a sense of collective identity among the French people. Ideas of la patrie (the fatherland) and le citoyen (the citizen) popularised the notion of a united community enjoying equal rights under a constitution. A new French flag replaced the royal standard. The Estates General was renamed the National Assembly and was elected by a group of active citizens. A central administrative system made uniform laws for the entire nation, and regional dialects were discouraged in favour of French as the national language.

Marianne and Germania were respective female allegories for the French and the German nation. They stood as personifications of ideals like 'liberty' and 'the republic'. The importance of the way in which they were portrayed lay in the fact that the public could identify with their symbolic meaning, and this would instil a sense of national unity in them.

In the 1800s, nationalist feelings were strong in the hearts of the middle-class Germans. They united in 1848 to create a nation-state out of the numerous German States. But the monarchy and the military got together to repress them and they gained support from the landowners of Prussia (the Junkers) too. Prussia soon became the leader of German unification movement. Its Chief Minister Otto von Bismarck was the architect of the process with support from Prussian army and Prussian bureaucracy. The unification process was completed after Prussia won wars with Austria, Denmark and France over seven years time. In January 1871, the Prussian king, William I, was proclaimed the German Emperor in a ceremony held at Versailles.