Among the major influences on nineteenth-century historical development was the emergence of nationalism—a mode of human organization and identity formation that gathered people of common language, social customs, territory, and religious heritage into autonomous, sovereign, self-defining units. While modern nationalism evolved in many ways from the religious consciousness of the medieval church as well as from the formative subjecthood of the early modern monarchy, it was far more complex in its structure, encompassing in its scope, and totalizing in its demands upon the loyalties of its adherents.