French Revolution was the bourgeoise revolution and it has ended the feudal and church system. People was looking for new system and in that system state should had allowed people to participate and secured their capital.(It was the rise of capitalism) State which used to make contact with his vassal people by Lords and Churches (for just collecting tax), was going to make contact with people directly and demand their devotion and participation. (Recruitment, education, census papers, tax etc.) People were going to participate state individually and has equal rights. People who were vassals, needed to be converted into citizens. (As they were going to converted in to consumers in the future)
Nation term which had not been a politic term until these days, had been defined as just a people who lives in same land. In the mid 19th century the term had changed and referred the people who lives in same land with precisely defined borders and has common interests. Nation term was still not politic in common people life it was not the real thing for them. The real things were common religion, language, culture, symbols, states founded in their past and ethnicities. These were useful things to build nation idea on them. Much more convincing nation idea was equal to much more loyalty and devotion. So all nation ideas had built from top to bottom on these values.
The new question was "Who will be nation=state and who won't be?". Of course the answer could not be out of the time, as expected in colonial empires' age people who can survive with their own state should had been called as nations. If you live in a powerful nation then you need to be assimilated and it would be better for your own. There were lots of Austrian intellectuals who had argued the best for their nation is integrity with Germany. On the other side, Ottoman Empire was not a super power anymore and independence had been suggesting for Balkans.
The new nation states had been challenging with new system. The idea of nation had been needed to be more convincing for more participation. Public language was their first tool in making the idea better. Public language had been made for people who had spoken many different dialects. Compulsory education played great role in this process. Central and modern state was borning.
Nationalism which could not reach their own states were politic problems for nation states and public language was a bomb ready to explode.
The first Congress of International Statistics was arranged in 1853. The aim of the congress was to bring about uniformity in the themes and methods of national statistics. "Spoken Language" of people was one of the main discussion topics. It was discussed that is it useful to record "Spoken Language" in census papers or not and what will be the effects of this record on nation and nationalism.
When the congress met again in 1860, it was decided that the records of "spoken language" can be important for some states and not important for the others so the records is kept like preferentially.
However, in 1874 the Congress met in Petersburg and the final decision is the "Spoken Language" is the required record for states.
At the end of the 19th century, nation had been defined mostly by language and the language have been one of the main factors in international diplomacy and politics.
Not after long time, nation states was going to learn this definition is not enough and proper for all examples. Since they were going to face with "Hungarians who don't speak Hungarian" and "Greeks who speak Slavic language". So, the other common factors such as religion, history, culture, symbols and ethnicity were going to be used in where they need.
