This was especially the case in the Ottoman Empire, which started falling apart in the 19th century, as first the Greeks, then the Serbs, Romanians, and Bulgarians, all predominantly Christian people, began clamoring for, and in some cases winning, independence. Egypt is another good example of nationalism serving both to create a new state and to weaken an empire. Muhammad Ali, who was actually Albanian and spoke Turkish, not Egyptian Arabic, and his ruling family encouraged the Egyptian people to imagine themselves as a separate nationality. But okay, so nationalism was a global phenomenon in the 19th century, and we can't talk about it everywhere, so instead we're going to focus on one case study. Japan. You thought I was going to say Germany, didn't you? Nope.