The development of nineteenth century Europe was marked by the evolution of the principle of nationalism, the democratization of political and social life, an economic boom, the progress of technology, and a spirit of realism and materialism in both science and culture. The diffusion of new national, social, and political ideas inevitably seriously disturbed the established order. Whereas in countries with a relatively homogeneous population from the point of view of nationality the resulting conflicts assumed the form of internal social and political crises, in multinational states such as the Habsburg and Ottoman empires national movements became disintegrating forces. Under the pressure of self-conscious nationalities, the old nationally heterogeneous monarchies entered their final period of crisis and gave way before those national forces which represented the dominant movements and ideas of a new era. The old integrating forces—the socially dominant feudal nobility and the army and bureaucracy, which were the most cohesive political elements and which were permeated with absolutism and legitimism—were destroyed by new and disintegrative nationalist and democratic movements that championed ideas of national, social, and political freedom. All the great national liberation movements of nineteenth century Europe from the time of the unification of the Italian and German nations and the liberation of the peoples of the Balkans until the collapse of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires took place at the expense of these two empires. The national crisis caused by the disintegrative aspirations of the various peoples within its boundaries made it difficult for the Habsburg monarchy to adjust to the new currents of democracy and social reform. As a result, the nationality question became more and more closely linked with the growing internal social and economic crisis. At the beginning of the twentieth century these three forces merged into a violent centrifugal force.