Franz did not rush to make a statement. Integrating all the nationalities of the Austrian Empire was no simple feat. It was predicted that, apart from the lower-class civilians who knew nothing of nationality, the vast majority would find it difficult to accept.
If the Empire could not gain genuine acceptance from its people, and instead formed a nominal Austrian Ethnicity, the end result could be quite embarrassing.
Nationalism originated in the 18th century in Europe as a bourgeois movement to break the chains of theocracy and feudalism.
From 1789 to 1871, the success of the bourgeois revolution and the establishment of the national state system were driven by nationalism.
The Southeast Europe region was relatively conservative, where nationalism usually emerged under the intellectual influence of the great powers.
