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Book reviews
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Book Reviews

Daniel L. Byman, Keeping the Peace: Lasting Solutions to Ethnic Conflicts.

Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Pp.296. $22.95 ISBN 0
801 86804 1

This is an impressive book on an important topic. To my mind, too much of the

extensive literature on ethnic conflict has focused on its causes and not enough on
what to do about it. Byman, who directs the Center for Middle East Public Policy for
the RAND Corporation, attempts to remedy this shortcoming. After a good and
succinct summary of the various theories of causation, he identifies five strategies
which governments can use to reduce the likelihood of large-scale ethnic violence:
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control, cooptation, manipulating ethnic identity, political participation, and partition.

The central part of the book is a chapter on each of these, discussing its strengths and
weaknesses fairly while not concealing his own preferences. Many of the illustrative
cases are drawn from his knowledge of the Middle East, so we also get the bonus of
some examples which are less familiar than the usual warhorses from Africa. The
penultimate chapter focuses on the costs and benefits of outside involvement in such
conflicts. In the final chapter, aptly named ‘Dilemmas and Choices’, he systematically
compares the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy for different kinds of
situations. The writing is lucid; this would be an excellent text for a class in
comparative politics or foreign policy and equally useful to anyone interested in the
policy implications of this major issue.
The serious discussion of control (a.k.a. repression by those who dislike it) is
especially welcome. Byman argues persuasively that Israeli policy towards Israeli
Arabs is a successful application of this technique and talks about the way in which
this was carried out involving dividing the community against itself and penetrating all
kinds of organization. He also contends that this policy reassured the Jewish majority
and therefore prevented any substantial violence from that community on the Arab
minority. He sees Iraqi behaviour towards the Kurds and Shiites, on the other hand, as
a total failure because of excessive reliance on brute force. Unlike the Israeli Arabs,
they rebel at the slightest hint of any weakening of control, and it is hard to see how
they can be brought back into the state on any other basis, even under a new regime.
The strategy of contrasting successes and failures is also followed in later chapters.
For cooptation, he selects Morocco as a success and Syria as a failure, while noting
that the weakness of the strategy makes it difficult to attribute too much to it alone.
The chapter on manipulating ethnic identity looks briefly at three cases: changing
identity among the Bakhtiyaris in Iran (success), inclusion for Berbers and Arabs in
Morocco (partial success), and Iraqi policy towards the Kurds (failure). For
participation, he focuses on hegemonic democracy in Israel and consociational
democracy in Lebanon. The discussion of partition centres on the Palestinian and Iraqi
Kurds’ cases, and he is sympathetic to the view of Chaim Kaufmann and others that
partition may be the least bad solution in some cases. Byman cites quantitative
comparative studies appropriately, but the book relies on comparative cases to elicit
underlying patterns.
Having analysed these strategies separately, Byman does not stop there as many
academics might do. Sensitive to the fact that policymakers must combine these
approaches into some sort of overall policy, he develops different bundles of strategies,
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130 NATI O N A L I S M an d E T H N I C P O L I T I C S

discussing their strengths and weaknesses in a way that should be helpful to people
trying to decide on their own policies and evaluating those of others. In this and other
ways, this book is a model of academic analysis which should be very useful to
policymakers.
The book is not without its flaws. I take issue with his first sentence that ethnic
violence is so common that it is ethnic peace that must be explained; the media
certainly give this impression, but statistical analyses by Gurr and Fearon and Laitin,
among others, have shown that most ethnic groups, including those with histories of
violence, are not engaged in warfare. On another issue, ethnic conflict is a moving
target in a changing world, but the material on the Arab–Israeli conflict (including the
fascinating analysis of the Israeli Arabs) seems out of date by about ten years, judging
from the references. Moreover, since the second intifada is mentioned in the chapter
on partition, the absence of any discussion of its impact in the democracy chapter is
jarring. Nonetheless, on balance, Byman has written a book which both scholars and
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policy makers will profit from reading.

ROY LICKLIDER
Rutgers University

Duncan Ivison, Postcolonial Liberalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2002. Pp.214. $65.00 (hbk); $24.00 (pbk) ISBN 0 521 82064 2 and 0 521 52751 1

This is a clearly written topical book that addresses the need to reshape or rethink
liberal political thought to ensure that it is more accommodating to indigenous
aspirations and ways of life. To do this, Ivison does not examine indigenous
aspirations, or try to outline an indigenous perspective, but draws on the post-colonial
literature critical of liberalism and then examines the conceptual resources available to
liberalism to respond to it, using indigenous people as a kind of test case.
Ivison identifies four key arguments that constitute the central post-colonial
challenge to liberalism: first, criticisms about liberalism’s individualism; second, its
abstract rationalism; third, the narrowness of its conception of justice; and fourth, its
conception of pluralism – namely, that it is not pluralist enough but often
underestimates the kind of differences it encounters especially with regard to
indigenous ways of life. In each case, Ivison argues either that the post-colonial
literature has overstated its case or he restates and redevelops liberalism in ways that
avoid the critique.
His redeveloped liberalism operates along several dimensions. It is clearly liberal
in its endorsement of three distinctively liberal values: first, that people are
fundamentally equal; second, that they are free; and third, that social and political
arrangement should be such as can promote the well-being of individuals and groups
in the manner, generally speaking, that they conceive of it. In developing these fairly
abstract principles, he goes on (in chapters 3 and 4) to defend a mode of public reason
distinct from either Rawlsian overlapping consensus or the Habermasian ideal of
trying to derive principles of public reason from the logic of communicative action. He
calls his ideal ‘a discursive modus vivendi’, where parties to the agreement engage in
dialogue over political norms and institutions, but do so as fully socialized, situated
human beings. He also draws extensively on the Nussbaum-Sen capabilities approach
in chapter 6 to argue that the post-colonial state must ensure that its institutions and
practices facilitate the capabilities, or real freedoms, of indigenous peoples. The
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normative shape of post-colonialism, according to Ivison, is that of a complex mutual
coexistence between indigenous people and the state, grounded in a discursively
legitimated set of dynamic modi vivendi on constitutional essentials and institutional
arrangements that help to secure and promote people’s basic capabilities (140).
Although this book is well worth reading, for its general argument, and its
interesting side discussions, on historical injustice and the nature of identity, for
example, or on the capacity of liberalism to accommodate collective rights, I had a
number of concerns with the overall structure and argument of the book. One concern
was the claim that this constituted post-colonial liberalism. The thrust of the book is
to ensure that indigenous people come to feel at home in the world, to ensure that the
post-colonial state fosters intersubjective trust and mutual identification. This
aspiration is a fundamentally modernist one, not post-colonial, as Ivison implicitly
admits (7), when he discusses its link with Hegel through to Charles Taylor. This might
seem a matter of semantics, or labelling, but a different title would have been more
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accurate.
More substantively, it is not clear how Ivison reconciles the procedural element of
his exchange of free public reasons in a discursive modus vivendi with the substantive
proposals suggested by his application of the capabilities approach. He justifies
aboriginal rights on the grounds that they promote the central capacities of Aboriginal
people by helping to secure their important and distinctive interests in land, culture and
self-government, interests that they have in addition to those associated with basic
citizenship rights (138). But it is possible that the mutual conversation, the discursive
modus vivendi, between indigenous and non-indigenous people, especially one that
involves situated, embedded people (with different values, ways of life and interests),
will not lead to this conclusion; that possibly indigenous and non-indigenous people
will value different capacities differently, or weight their value differently when trade-
offs occur; or disagree over the ways to promote or facilitate the development of
different capacities. The procedural modus vivendi cannot ensure that the results are
substantively just. It is not even clear how Ivison ensures that this conversation will
proceed in a way that minimizes domination (although he says that it should). This is
another way of saying that what is agreed to might not be the same as what is justified
from a more idealized perspective, because agreement takes place in the context of
unequal power relations and divergent understandings. Although Ivison does not
completely resolve this tension, his book is useful in highlighting it, and attempting to
come to grips with the extent to which liberal ideals were historically and conceptually
complicit in colonial domination.

MARGARET MOORE
Queen’s University

Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp.215. $25.00 ISBN 0 801 43883 7

Eyewitness to Genocide is a political history of the genocide in Rwanda, which in

many ways replays the scenes from that horrible period, but does so in an effort to
identify and assign culpability for the tragedy. As Barnett puts it he is ‘motivated by
twin aspirations: to reconstruct the moral reasons that guided the actions of the UN,
and to isolate who, if anyone at the UN, bears moral responsibility for the genocide’.
I started off rather sceptical of an effort to point the moral finger at a person or an
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132 NATI O N A L I S M an d E T H N I C P O L I T I C S

institution; by the end of the book I was not relieved of my scepticism but the book
does provide a rather fascinating view of the machinations of the UN and its
constituent parts. That is, although I do not see sufficient evidence to assign moral
blame, there are ample grounds to identify inequities in the system, operational rules
that seem arcane, and decision rules that do not jive with expectations. Anyone
studying peacekeeping operations would be well served to consider this book.
The core of the author’s argument is that the right information was available to the
right people at the right time to effectively prevent the genocide from ever gaining
sufficient momentum to succeed. This information was acquired by the peacekeeping
force in the field, supplied in part by an informant; it was transmitted to the UN
department of peacekeeping operations, and by extension, according to the author, to
the general secretary of the United Nations. The major fault, according to Barnett, is
that Mr Boutros Ghali did not take the next step and inform the Security Council about
the plans for the evolving genocide.
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Barnett describes in extensive detail the communication traffic, sometimes rather

impassioned, between the UN force commander in Rwanda, Dallaire, and the
department of peacekeeping operations in New York. Dallaire appears to foretell of the
impending slaughter, and identifies the perpetrators of the genocide, even though the
terminology of ‘genocide’ was not yet on the agenda. The DPKO continually instructs
Dallaire to remain neutral and specifically denies him the authority to act
preemptively. The questions then become threefold: first, why would the UN look so
impotent in the face of otherwise convincing evidence; second, why would the
secretariat and the member states refuse to label the actions of the Hutu as genocide;
and third, why did Boutros Ghali appear to fail to give the proper information about
events in Rwanda to the Security Council?
Barnett lays most of the blame for this on organization imperatives that gravitated
more towards maintaining the viability of the institution than securing the lives of the
Rwandans, as well as on the skittishness of the member states to get involved in a civil
war. The decision comes on the heels of the débâcle in Somalia and the ineffectiveness
of the UN efforts in Bosnia. Bartlett describes a situation where one more failure on
the part of UN peacekeeping will lead inexorably to the radical reduction in the
organization itself. Institutional self-preservation, therefore, became a driving force
behind the apparent obfuscation of information and the agenda setting that gravitated
toward inaction in the face of evidence that action was warranted. There is enough
blame, as the author points out, for the whole community of member states and the
institution of the UN to bear the burden of responsibility.
Up to this point Barnett weaves a compelling tale of how a number of factors came
together to create the conditions for genocide, when prior knowledge suggested that it
was preventable. But from here the argument gets more speculative, and in the process
less convincing. In effect most blame falls on Boutros Ghali for keeping information
from the Security Council in order to prevent them from acting, though he reserves
some blame for the powerful member states. That is, moral culpability is assigned, but
the evidence required to make such a case is not as compelling as the opening
argument. As Barnett argues, ‘the most powerful member states must have known at a
fairly early stage, an argument based on the assumption that powerful states have
immense resources and intelligence at their disposal’ (161; my emphasis). And further,
in arguing that ignorance of the impending genocide is not grounds for exoneration,
Bartlett argues that the ignorance defence ‘weaken(s) once we ask not what these
officials did know but what they might be expected to have known, what they could
have known, what they probably did know’ (162; my emphasis). In effect the author
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is assigning blame based on a counterfactual claim that the central players should have
known something that they claim they did not. It is not clear to me that this standard
of evidence would hold up in a court of law.
It would have been helpful if the author had presented fully a counter argument for
why the UN acted the way it did, from which we would be more able to evaluate the
veracity of his explanation. For example, one compelling argument might be that
international organizations remain but minor players in international relations.
Effectively, this would be an argument that realists have it right: states matter and
states will only act in their own self-interest. There was nothing in the Rwandan
débâcle that broached the interests of the powerful states. Another potential avenue
would be to examine the indicators that organizations use to evaluate progress in their
policies.
In the final analysis this book provides an insightful contribution to the literature
on peacekeeping and the conditions that lead to successful outcomes. Not only does
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the Rwandan case represent a failure of peacekeeping, but also a failure of the
institution that sponsors peacekeeping operations. Barnett reminds us that in spite of
the increasingly central notion of ethics in world politics, institutions and their
constituent member states do not always act with the question of what is the ethical
approach at the forefront of their deliberations.

PATRICK M. REGAN
Binghamton University

Daniel Levy and Yfaat Weiss (eds), Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and
Israeli Perspectives on Immigration. New York: Berghahn Books, 2002. Pp.288.
$75.00 (hbk); $25.00 (pbk) ISBNs 1 57181 291 1 and 1 57181 292 X

Challenging Ethnic Citizenship, an edited collection that is the product of a

conference, ‘Citizenship and Identity: German and Israeli Perspectives,’ hosted by
Haifa University in March 2000, is a well-researched and insightful assembly of
essays. Topically, the papers are remarkably well-organized, as coherent as many
monographs. The authors are diverse in their academic and national backgrounds,
although historians and sociologists are predominant, and just about everyone cites
Rogers Brubaker at some point. One of the book’s strengths in gathering these authors
is the access they implicitly provide to literature published in languages other than
English, particularly German.
In the introduction, Daniel Levy recognizes the opposition by some to
comparisons of German and Israeli immigration policies, but identifies several
compelling commonalities, including the self-perception of each as ‘unique’, that
justify the exercise. In particular, the immigration each country has received since the
Second World War has exacerbated tensions between ethnic (Kulturnation and Eretz
Israel) and civil (Staatsnation and Medinat Israel) visions of nation and shifted the
terms of citizenship debates. Despite their status as countries of immigration, Germany
and Israel have privileged jus sanguinis (rights according to blood) over jus soli
(territory) as a basis of citizenship, in both legal and cultural practices. In addition, as
one of the authors notes, the transnationalism of each nation’s diaspora ‘play[s] a key
role in shaping their national outlooks’ (85).
The opening chapters are statistical profiles of ethnicity in Germany and Israel.
Both focus on place of birth – an important and revealing shift from the usual German
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134 NATI O N A L I S M an d E T H N I C P O L I T I C S

measure – and offer important insights. Yinon Cohen’s historical breakdown of Israeli
demographics demonstrates two key points: the significance of the years 1947 to 1951,
where the Arab majority was rapidly displaced and replaced by a large Jewish
majority; and the internal fragmentation of the Jewish population. Rainer Münz’ study
of Germany identifies the privileging of ethnic Germans born outside current German
borders, in contrast to more than a million German-born ‘foreigners’. This implicitly
calls into question definitions of ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ identities and only invites
more discussion of the implications.
Dieter Gosewinkel’s piece on citizenship legislation in nineteenth- and twentieth-
century Germany, and Ralf Fücks’ brief contribution on dual citizenship and the
coming European Union citizenship thus follow these nicely. Gosewinkel exposes the
historical depth of ethnicity-based citizenship, but also emphasizes the pragmatic
rather than ideological basis for its introduction. While Gosewinkel insists that cultural
definitions of ‘German’ were intended to facilitate the inclusion of (some of) those
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who were not ethnically German, Fücks indicates that the debate over this cultural
identity continues even today in ‘the desperate attempt to answer the question ‘who is
a German?’ (79). Central to the present struggle is the acceptance of non-white and/or
non-Christian groups, although as Fücks suggests, the Muslim faith of Turkish
immigrants is no longer a challenge to Christianity as much as it is to the secular nature
of German society.
Yfaat Weiss parallels that work with her own on conflicts over ‘who is a Jew’ and
‘who is an Israeli’, particularly since the 1970 expansion of the Law of Return to
include non-Jewish relations of Jews. One of the more interesting points raised by
Weiss in her analysis of the Law of Return is that Jewish immigrants implicitly had the
highest status, and it required specification that Jews born in Israel were to have the
same rights as Jewish immigrants, not the other way round. I wish she had taken a
moment to explain her title: ‘The Golem and Its Creator, or How the Jewish Nation-
State Became Multiethnic’. I know the story of the golem (although many readers might
not), but it remained unclear to me how and why Weiss was employing it as a metaphor.
Other studies of specific populations are discussed in subsequent chapters,
including Sinti and Roma communities in Germany, ‘foreign’ youth culture in Berlin,
documented and undocumented migrant workers in Israel, and Russian Israelis. These
collectively demonstrate the many challenges to simple or homogeneous ideas about
ethnic or national identity in both countries. Dimitry Shumsky’s chapter on Russian
Israelis stands out as it breaks through the standard binaries to argue against reductive,
oppositional identities of ‘Israeli’ and ‘Russian’. Taking up the work of not only
Brubaker, but Valery Tishkov on ethnicity in the former USSR, he uproots
assumptions about Judaism under Soviet rule, and opens up possibilities for new
matrices of identity.
Three strong chapters on broader citizenship and identity questions ensue. Baruch
Kimmerling addresses the issue of religious citizenship (just as its absence was
causing me concern); Hassan Jabareen situates Israel and the Palestinians in a post-
colonial context and raises good questions about the meaning of ‘indigenous’ (as
Shumsky did earlier); and Daniel Levy (building on Fücks and Münz) addresses the
complexity of ethnic German immigrants in the context of changing ideas of national
identity and citizenship.
Diana Pinto then presents an exceptional survey of Jewish identity in post-Cold
War Europe and its relationship to Israel and the United States. Its broad and frank
look at shifts in geopolitics and identity is rich in insight and it is one of the best pieces
in the book. Natan Sznaider’s argument for building citizenship around consumption
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and indifference is not as strong, but his idea is somewhat desperately proposed as an
alternative to war and in that, it bears some consideration. It would have been
interesting for him to discuss the degree to which western democracies have been able
to avert violence in their societies by providing wealth, or the opportunity to gain
wealth. In some cases, citizens appear content to accept reductions in their rights and
civic status, as long as their consumption patterns are not disrupted. At a certain point,
however, Sznaider’s case for shopping has too many parallels to drug use for me to
embrace it fully.
These authors are ‘challenging ethnic citizenship’, but more than that, they are
exploring the nuance and complexity of ethnic identity and citizenship, ultimately a
more fruitful practice. It is not enough to critique the discrimination practised by those
who seek to build or protect an ethnic community or ‘nation’. If we fail to go farther
– to understand and contextualize these efforts, and to seek new forms of political
organization in which such identities can be expressed meaningfully – we surrender to
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the neo-liberal, post-political, ahistorical model of identity in which we are all ‘the
same’. The careful research of these authors prevents such a narrow view and equips
us instead with valuable information and insight for the journey that lies ahead.

PATRICIA K. WOOD
York University

Günther Schlee (ed.), Imagined Differences: Hatred and the Construction of Identity.
New York: Palgrave, 2002. Pp.280. $65.00 (hbk) ISBN 3 825 83956 7

This volume presents a timely and useful collection of essays on how imagined
differences emerge and are maintained and changed by using feelings of hatred and the
construction/reconstruction of group identity and boundary. This is an important topic
for both theoretical and policy reasons. Ethnic conflicts, and even genocides, remained
in the news for most of the last decade of the twentieth century and are still important
domestic and international sources of insecurity and suffering in many parts of the
world. A key value-added of this book lies in its attempt to draw attention to the fact
that ‘the problem seems to be that the approaches to conflict resolution still fail to
recognize local factors’ and that ‘these local and regional social networks and political
dynamics are related to the identities and motivations of the local actors who largely
organize political violence’ (v).
The book has five parts. The first part provides an introduction and a summary of
the book as well as a discussion of the theoretical approach. The broad agenda of the
volume is ‘to contribute to the understanding of the formations of social identities and
of the articulations – hostile and other – of these identities with each other’ (4). To this
end, the cases span a vast number of countries from Morocco to Indonesia, thereby
providing many variations on the theme as well as some recurrent elements which are
relevant for a theory of conflicting identities. Calling for an approach that goes beyond
‘moralism’ (i.e., making violence a taboo theme to analyse) or treating violence as an
abnormal or pathological situation, the volume as a whole seeks to ‘find out how, why
and under which circumstances normal people, who are husbands, fathers, sons and
lovers in other contexts, commit genocide, massacres and gang rapes’, (5). One may
satisfactorily answer these questions only by considering how ‘identities are
remoulded by individuals who want to make sense of their situation or – as people
often live happily or otherwise for extended periods of time in situations which do not
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136 NATI O N A L I S M an d E T H N I C P O L I T I C S

make much sense – simply to fit the needs of their economic or social advancement’
(8). This is done by using a ‘thick’ descriptive case-study approach, which clearly is a
landmark of this volume. Such an approach is necessary to avoid essentializing what
is always a never-ending process of ‘kaleidoscopic recombinations of features in this
game of identity and difference’ (8). This necessitates, as in this book, a dual
conceptualization of identity and difference where ‘identity refers to the absence of a
difference, the absence of a difference along any of the dimensions which are used to
define social categories ... If such identifying features differ, we speak of a difference
– or a social boundary – if they do not differ, we speak of an identity’ (8).
The dynamic and process-like character of the duality identity/difference is
transparent in the theory chapter which introduces the notion of switching identity
discourses to understand and explain the relationship between ‘primordial emotions
and the social construction of we-groups’. ‘We-groups’ such as ethnic groups and
nations are social constructions and as such are liable to rapid change. The process of
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switching refers to a multiplicity of reference frames and the possibility of moving

across or reinterpreting more-or-less inclusive group’s boundaries (36). Switching is a
collective act and hence requires coordination and synchronization so that groups can
successfully redefine their boundaries, declare old labels invalid currency, and
construct new labels as the markers of connection. This is a role that ‘political
entrepreneurs or central persons’ play (41).
Parts II to V successfully build on these ideas to look at a number of empirical
situations. Part II explores the unravelling of conflicting emotions associated with
social identifications, ranging from local theories of temperamental dispositions,
ethnicized gender roles, conflicting feelings of pride and shame to despair and social
isolation. In Part III, the connection between hatred and the boundaries of social
identities is explored by looking at how differences are imagined in Bali (Indonesia),
how religion, modernity, and tradition are blended together to construct difference
inside an Egyptian village, and how multi-dimensionality is an important characteristic
of the Oromo identity in Ethiopia. Part IV looks at how violence is organized during
the process of constructing the nation state. ‘Writing the nation’ is an integral part of
this enterprise, as clearly illustrated in the pre-war Indonesian nationalist literature.
The key issue of how politics and identities interact during the process of nation-
building is explored by examining the role of the Berber identity in the Moroccan
society and polity. The final part of the book considers how the politics of difference
shape the escalation of violence and the processes of shifting the boundaries and
fragmentation of states. Part V thus examines how exclusivist rhetorics contribute to
constitute the political identities in Algeria by contrasting the Islamists and secular
forces, how combat modes and the cultivation of hatred reinforces a process of
revenge/counter-revenge killing in Sri Lanka, how targeting the victims of violence in
Northern Ireland is carried through a hatred constructed out of a use of folk history and
voluntary associations, and how the politics of difference is used to create regularity
in the recent history of Somalia.
The case-studies constitute the best value-added feature of the volume. They
provide much ‘thick’ descriptive materials from a very broad spectrum of local, ethnic,
and cultural settings. This helps to explicate the issue of identity/difference duality as
a never-ending process of political transformation. The thick narratives are colourful,
rich, and detailed enough to make the reader ‘feel’ the ‘reality’ of the ‘imagined’
differences. The rich diversity of the materials clearly highlights the ubiquity of the
phenomenon of imagining differences and identity boundary construction and
reconstruction and its impacts on politics, broadly defined.
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The overall theoretical contribution of the volume is weak, however. There is very
little explicit connection to the vast literature on identity/difference construction in
sociology and political science (and other disciplines). The concept of switching
identity boundaries remains under-theorized. The overall argument could have been
anchored within closely related approaches such as the ‘interactionism’ approach (e.g.,
Eric Goffman as well as other ‘constructivists’). The book is also short in delineating
the causal mechanisms through which the process of switching unfolds. This is an
important question both for theory purpose and policy reasons. Delineating the
necessary and sufficient conditions for switching identity boundaries and establishing
differences in addition to highlighting the role of political entrepreneurs are crucial
elements needed for enlightened policy formulation and implementation.
The book is not hard to read and the narratives make it quite attractive. Yet, the
overall enterprise is weakened by the fact that some chapters need more organization
in presenting both their arguments and the ‘thick’ description of the narratives.
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Although the abstracts are very helpful, the value added to the volume would have
been higher had the editor suggested a template for the empirical chapters to follow.
This would have increased the comparative values of the individual contributions in
the light of the theoretical questions of the book, thereby making the whole more than
just the sum of the individual contributions. Nevertheless, the book is a wonderful
narrative-driven introduction to the topic of identity/difference duality.
Undergraduates will learn much from it.

BADREDINE ARFI
Southern Illinois University

Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to Al Qaeda.

London and New York, Routledge, 2003. Pp154. $22.95 ISBN 0 415 27766 3

In the wake of 11 September, scholars, policymakers, and the media have paid
overwhelming attention to the terrorist threat posed to the United States by Islamic
terrorism in general and Osama bin Laden’s network Al- Qaeda in particular.
Christopher Hewitt, in Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to Al
Qaeda, provides a timely piece of literature that situates Islamic terrorism within 50
years of terrorism in the US, demonstrating that over 3,000 incidents of terrorism have
occurred on US soil since the 1950s, perpetrated by a wide array of extremist groups
ranging from white supremacists to anti-Castro Cuban émigrés. Hewitt identifies two
salient causes of terrorism in the US: extreme groups that feel marginalized by the
political process, and groups that have a base of ‘mobilized’ support through various
organizations. Hewitt names two likely terrorist threats in the future: the extreme right
in the US, including anti-abortion groups; white supremacists and Christian patriots;
and Islamic terrorists.
To support his argument, Hewitt analyses terrorist trends in the US through a large-
n data set. He uses this data to test two hypotheses about terrorism in democracies: that
terrorism is the result of groups that feel marginalized or ignored by the political
process; and that terrorism is the result of politicians creating a permissive atmosphere
for extremism. He finds, generally, that the former hypothesis is much more salient in
American terrorism. Hewitt also considers the role of organizations and individuals in
perpetrating terrorist acts. He distinguishes between sympathizers of terrorist acts –
those that passively support violent extremist groups – and mobilizers, which are
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individuals who participate in extremist organizations of varying degrees. By

comparing estimates of sympathizers with mobilizers, he demonstrates that extreme
organizations with a wide body of mobilizers have a higher degree of violence,
suggesting that terrorists need a base of support, both materially and socially, in order
to carry out their operations (45–6).
Hewitt concludes by offering predictions on terrorist activities in the US over the
next ten years, concurring with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials who
name the extreme right and Islamic groups as the biggest threat to homeland security.
Citing polling data, he lists five controversial policy issues that will most likely
continue to fuel the extreme right – increased immigration, a multi-lingual society,
prayer in school, homosexual rights, and abortion – noting that legislation tends to go
against the will of the general population.
Hewitt’s book provides a thorough discussion on the rise of the extreme right, their
concerns, and the federal and state policies that may be driving these groups to terrorist
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acts. This argument is extremely important, given the overwhelming attention being
paid to Islamic terrorism. Hewitt’s book, therefore, is a reminder that the United States
faces another threat from terrorists who have shown increasing resolve to use violence
to assert their political agenda, most visible in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Hewitt’s treatment of Islamic groups in the US, however, is less complete. The
grievances and goals of these groups are known, namely US foreign policy decisions
to the Muslim world and specifically the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia,
unconditional support for Israel, and Iraqi sanctions (113). Hewitt is willing to state
that US domestic policies on issues such as homosexual rights, abortion and prayer in
school are cutting against the will of the people and fuelling extremist discontent
within the far right (122). The implication is that if the government were to align its
policies more with the will of the American people, terrorist violence would decrease.
However, Hewitt is not willing to make the same assertion for Islamic terrorism. He
does not suggest that the US reconsider its foreign policies towards the Muslim world
as a means of mitigating the Islamic terrorist threat to the US. Rather, he prescribes
tightening immigration policies, profiling (as a short term remedy), issuing identity
cards, and penetrating Islamic organizations in the US (129–30). These prescriptions
are out of step with his underlying arguments: extremists resort to terrorism when they
feel alienated from the political process; and terrorism is achieved with the
foundational support of a critical mass that actively condones terrorists’ beliefs and
actions. Even if Islamic terrorists in the US were foreign nationals, and therefore not
participants in the political process, they still would require a base of support, which
would most likely be US citizens. Hewitt’s logic, therefore, should apply both to the
extreme right and to extreme Islamic organizations in the US.

HEATHER S. GREGG
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Renéo Lukic and Michael Brint, Culture, Politics, and Nationalism in the Age of
Globalization. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. Pp.181. $70.00 ISBN 0 7546 1436 0

Many edited works that attempt to tackle expansive or ground-breaking issues often
run into problems of coherence and focus of topic. Unfortunately, this volume is not
immune to these problems and, in fact, is largely hampered by them. The first major
problem of this work is the lack of coherence among the authors regarding their topic.
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It is unclear whether they are focusing on the cultural aspects of globalization or upon
the technical and mechanical aspects of the communications revolution. Regardless,
there are a few chapters in the work that shed some light on the interstices of the
technological changes promulgating globalization and the making and unmaking of
national cultures and identities.
Brint’s initial chapter on the culture of global technology may indeed be the best
in the collection, starting out with an impressive analysis of globalization as seen
through three paradigms of cultural nationalism, cosmopolitanism and post-
modernism. However, throughout the rest of the chapter, Brint focuses on analysing
the philosophical underpinnings of these three paradigms rather than on how they
might help us to understand the current arena of globalizing forces and technological
change. The direction that he starts out in is fascinating, but his conclusion that these
changes may lead to a re-assertion of the local alongside the omnipresent
homogenization of culture in the American mould needs to be examined further.
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Following on from Brint, Coyle’s chapter on the æsthetics of the machine provides
an excellent analysis of the development of computers and software, linking the two
to developments in philosophical thought. Although weaker in his link to changes in
identity, Coyle’s analysis provides the basis for further investigation between the
creation of an information based society and how we, as humans, view ourselves and
our identities.
Of the rest of the book’s chapters only Zask’s on the source of French attitudes
towards multiculturalism stands out as an interesting, relevant and, mostly, well-
reasoned analysis. The one caveat that needs to be applied here is Zask’s definition of
multiculturalism as ‘American’ in character; a definition that some will definitely
agree with, but others may have some difficulty accepting. Zask’s analysis breaks
down the basis of French identity into two camps representing the Republican spirit of
the French Revolution and the neo-nationalism of the National Front; embodying a
more racist, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic definition of the French Nation. In both
of these traditions political movements cannot viably exist outside their ‘French’
contexts and national identifications such as English, Irish, Asian or African cannot
coexist with the overarching ‘French’ national identification the way they can in US
society. This difference in itself makes the chapter well worth the read and,
unfortunately, eclipses Lukic’s analysis of the import of France’s anti-American
policies towards NATO intervention in Kosovo.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book’s chapters seem to suffer from a lack of both
cohesion and coherence, especially with regard to following a clearly delineated theme
and, most importantly, providing an end point, evaluation or conclusion to their
analyses. Instead they appear to meander through their subjects with very little
attention paid to how the various elements (authors, theories, technologies or
philosophies) combine to create a coherent, complete analysis. This reviewer is unsure
whether this lack represents his own preference for a western-oriented analytical
paradigm or merely the poor attention to logical thinking and detail that often
characterize modern academic writing and limit its accessibility to wider audiences.
The most egregious example of these shortcomings are found in Schutt’s chapter
on orality and the Internet; where he advocates the abolition of reading as a discipline
taught in school; mostly because it is ‘counterintuitive’ and difficult. Unfortunately,
this chapter is based upon a number of fallacies and questionable assumptions, leaving
this reviewer unconvinced that the abolition of literacy is desirable or even possible.
While the idea of non-linear learning brought about by the advent of hypertext and
‘hot links’ between ideas can be an innovative tool for disseminating knowledge, it
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is useless for teaching concepts like logical thought and analysis that are
indispensable for making sense of the vast amount of material – mostly textual –
available on the Internet. Schutt’s main examples of children learning to program
VCRs and use the Internet are fallacious in the extent that this still requires the
ability to read, as is his promotion of a classless ‘Bushman’ society brought about
by the abolition of the written word. (Instead one might fear a society of those who
can read and have logical and analytical skills, and those who only know what they
have watched on video and do not have the ability or imagination to link complex
concepts to one another.)
On a final, and perhaps nitpicky, note it is worth mentioning that when publishing
with an imprint like Ashgate, which requires that their editors and authors provide
‘photo-ready’ manuscripts, it is incumbent upon those editors and authors to
thoroughly proof-read their manuscripts. In addition to the confusion caused by the
many grammatical errors – some no doubt caused by difficulties in translating chapters
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from their original languages – the many spelling and other proofing errors detracted
substantially from the authors’ attempts to bring important issues to our attention.
It is with some sadness that this reviewer cannot in good conscience recommend
this volume in its entirety. While some of the chapters mentioned above are worth
examination for their first thoughts on some interesting topics, they cannot overcome
the lack of overall coherence on the topic and the sense that these chapters were
‘thrown together’ without any clear sense of the theme of the work and what the
overall message intended.

LANDON E. HANCOCK
George Mason University

Paul Maylam, South Africa’s Racial Past: The History and Historiography of Racism,
Segregation, and Apartheid. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001. $89.95 ISBN 0 754 61788 2

Paul Maylam’s book is, in many respects, an ideal introduction to the historical study
of South Africa for the graduate student or for the scholar coming to the subject for the
first time. Clearly written, and reflecting an impressive knowledge of the literature, it
provides a good road map of the major controversies in the field. Even for veteran
researchers in the area, South Africa’s Racial Past gives much food for thought, by
way of Maylam’s crisp restatement and systematic rethinking of familiar arguments.
At another level though, there is a certain uneasiness in the structure of this book.
In seeking to combine an overview of the history of the South African racial order with
an account of its historiography, Maylam has to carry out a complex balancing act,
which does not always come off. Trying to perform two different (although obviously
related) tasks means that both dimensions are stinted. As a historical survey, the text
is more than competent, but it lacks the originality of William Beinart’s Twentieth
Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford Uuniversity Press, 1994). As a discussion of
historiography it is often excellent, but it does not tell us enough about the contexts
and careers of the key historians. Christopher Saunders’ The Making of the South
African Past (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988), though less analytical than Maylam’s
work, is more informative on these questions.
And just as the book is somewhat wrenched between being a history and being a
historiography, its approach suffers from a certain over-inclusiveness. Maylam is
almost too judicious in his responses to historiographical disputes. This is to a degree,
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understandable. The fraught nature of South Africa’s political conflicts has affected
the nature of historical arguments, often rendering them excessively polarized in
content and polemical in style. But Maylam is so intent on overcoming polarities of
opinion that a certain blunting of the intellectual edge of the debates results.
Maylam argues that racism has been an insufficiently differentiated category in
South African historical writing. He suggests that the phenomenon needs to be
disaggregated into four separate elements. These are, first, racial consciousness –
beliefs about perceived differences between human groups; second, racial theory,
developing into ‘scientific’ racism; third, informal racial practices; and fourth,
formalized racial policy. Maylam sees much of South African historiography as having
failed to deal analytically with racism because it has conflated or confused these
different phenomena. He argues that the four components have not necessarily all been
present at the same time in South Africa, and that there are complex interconnections
between them, which need to be traced. Maylam puts forward a chronology, which
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runs along the following lines. He sees a racial consciousness and a loosely articulated
racial ideology as present amongst the whites of the eighteenth-century Cape. Informal
racial segregation he views as developing during the nineteenth century, while
institutionalized racism only emerges in twentieth-century South Africa. Maylam
contends that in the post-apartheid era, whilst informal and formal segregation has
gone, racial consciousness and racial ideologies continue to be prevalent amongst
whites.
Like most Southern African historians of his generation, Maylam is preoccupied
by the rupture with the Liberal historiography of the 1920s to the 1960s brought about
by the Marxist work of the 1970s and 1980s. Broadly, the Liberals argued that the
roots of white racism in South Africa were to be found in the struggles between black
and white on the colonial frontier of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Apartheid was, in this perspective, a carry-over of the frontier mentality into the
modern era. Liberals also stressed the sharpness of the divide between apartheid and
the early twentieth century’s (supposedly) less harsh forms of segregation. Marxists
on the other hand, emphasized that apartheid was the product of South Africa’s late
nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrialization. The racial structure was, in this
view, functional to the interests of capitalism. Some Marxists, notably Martin
Legassick, believed that racial identities on the pre-industrial frontier had been far
more fluid than Liberals thought, with prominent roles being played by mixed-race
communities like the Griqua, and the Boers often acting as just one group of roving
pastoralists amongst others. Marxists generally argued that apartheid merely adapted
pro-capitalist policies of racial regulation, initiated at the turn of the century by
British imperialism, to the new circumstances engendered by the urbanization crisis
of the 1940s.
Maylam seeks to bridge the gap between these views. He argues that both
positions neglect the role of slavery in the Cape, from the seventeenth century to
British Empire emancipation in the 1830s, in generating white racial consciousness
and beliefs. He celebrates the contribution of historians of the slavery era such as
Elphick, Giliomee, Ross, Fredrickson and Shell, whom he sees as working outside the
standard paradigms. Maylam portrays both Liberals and Marxists as having partially
valid cases, which they have overstated. Thus the frontier was somewhat more racially
polarized than some Marxists believed, but less so than the Liberals contended.
Similarly, for Maylam, industrial capitalism was more important in the creation of
apartheid than Liberals allowed, but not the all-determining factor that Marxists
thought. Although Maylam criticizes excessive focus on either rupture or continuity in
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the historical literature on South African racism, his own emphasis does tend to fall on
the side of continuity. In the Maylam synthesis, slavery, the frontier and segregation
all cumulatively contribute to the making of apartheid.
Maylam’s portrayal of the debate, and his adjudication of it, is not quite as even-
handed as would initially appear. One striking feature of Maylam’s treatment of the
Marxist position is that he tends to identify it with the work of Structuralist Marxists,
and to give less attention to the work of Marxist-influenced social historians. The latter
body of literature, emerging in Britain in the 1970s under the guidance of Shula Marks,
and flourishing in South Africa in the 1980s, does not fit well with the
characterizations of the Marxist historiography given by Maylam. Informed both by
UK-based Africanist historiography and the work of E.P. Thompson, the South
African social history literature largely avoided a crudely functionalist linkage
between capitalism and apartheid, through its strong focus on questions of popular
culture and agency. Maylam’s account does not convey the richness of the social
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historians’ engagement with these issues, which can be seen in the volumes of their
work edited during the 1980s by Marks and her collaborators in the UK and by Belinda
Bozzoli in South Africa.
Maylam seems to me overly anxious to downplay aspects of the historical record,
which do not fit in with a narrative of a cumulative rise of racism. I was not
convinced by his attempt to refute Legassick’s view of the frontier. Maylam seeks to
minimize the blurring of racial boundaries in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Cape Town, although this reading of the city was strongly argued by George
Fredrickson, a historian he admires. Maylam casts doubt on Charles van Onselen’s
case for the existence of surprisingly flexible racial relations in pre-apartheid
agriculture, without really giving due weight to the massive evidence with which
van Onselen backs his position. Because of his relative neglect of the social
historians, Maylam gives little attention to the cross-racial phenomena in early
twentieth-century urban phenomena which their work unearthed and studied: multi-
racial youth gangs, racially integrated housing areas, inter-racial sexual
relationships, and forms of cultural hybridity.
Maylam’s oversight in this regard is symptomatic of his argument. In my view,
apartheid cannot be understood simply as the product of 300 years of South African
history. It was the response of a certain white political leadership to the conjuncture of
the mid-twentieth century. There were features of South Africa’s past which pointed
in other directions. Maylam tends to ignore these other, lost, historical possibilities. In
doing so, he runs the risk of turning the story of the rise of apartheid into a teleological
narrative.
Although Maylam is obviously right to argue that informal types of white racism
persist into the post-apartheid era, his emphasis on this perhaps deflects attention from
the more interesting question of how new forms of racial politics are emerging
amongst both black and white youth. Young South Africans who are in their early
twenties today, were in primary school when Nelson Mandela became President. They
are undoubtedly concerned with forms of racial identity. But it seems doubtful to me
that their politics can simply be read off from that of the past.

J O N AT H A N H Y S L O P
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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Christopher Lord and Olga Strietska-Ilina (eds), Parallel Cultures: Majority/Minority
Relations in the Countries of the Former Eastern Bloc. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001.
Pp.295. $77.95 ISBN 0 754 61616 9

Parallel Cultures is an evocative title for a work on ethnic identity. It suggests that to
understand ethnicity and ethnic change it is necessary to consider each group as part
of a broader, shifting mosaic of identities. The most compelling chapters in this book
do precisely this. While it is understandably difficult to maintain coherence in edited
volumes, it would still have been more satisfying to see this theme carried more
explicitly throughout the work.
The volume consists of six chapters: a very long (123 pages) introduction by
Christopher Lord, and five subsequent contributions focusing on specific ethnic
groups or areas within Eastern Europe. These include chapters on the Hungarians of
Transylvania by Gavril Flora, the Pomaks of Bulgaria by Madeleine Danova, the
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Poleshuks of Belarus by Kirill Shevchenko, the Donetsk region of Ukraine by

Kateryna Stadnik, and Russia as a whole by Olga Strietska-Ilina.
In his introduction, Lord displays an impressive range of interests, touching upon
subjects as varied as Roman citizenship, the Welsh language, and Chinese religion. He
is at his best when describing different empirical patterns of ethnic development: his
discussion of the varying trajectories of the ‘Celtic fringe’ linguistic populations of the
British Isles (38–41), for instance, is both informative and interesting, as is his lengthy
comparison of the Jews and Cathars in Medieval Europe (65–95). An attempt to
characterize Lord’s theoretical conclusions, however, leads to some frustration.
Certain basic principles seem clear: Lord, like most scholars dealing with the subject,
locates the origins of the nation-state (and of nations and nationalism) in Western
Europe, as a historically localized and contingent phenomenon – in his view a
particular product of Roman citizenship and, especially, Western Christianity. With the
national state, however, there arose two distinct patterns for dealing with the various
minority populations that inevitably found themselves within its borders – especially
in its urban centres (the loci of ‘parallel cultures’): Jews were tolerated as a foil to
Christianity, while Cathars and other dualists were destroyed as direct ‘counter-
cultural’ threats to the state.
Beyond this, however, it is difficult to discern a coherent theory of nationalism,
or even of ‘parallel cultures’. Lord alludes to at least six broad explanations of
nationality: ideas, or the appeal of Herderian romanticism (19, 34); modernization,
or the effects of trade and urban growth (8–9, 49); culture, or the notion that the
world is divided into broad religio-cultural zones (1–10); a focus on ethnic
boundaries (36); instrumentalism, or the belief that social identities are the product
of manipulation by élites (38, 116–19); and even primordialism, the idea that there
is something inherent to ethnic identity (51–90). Some of these theories – which
echo scholars such as Kedourie, Gellner, Weber, Huntington, Barth, Hardin, and
Geertz but are unfortunately not well-cited – are not compatible with one another;
yet it is often unclear where Lord stands. Lord’s frequent asides – for instance, on
the symbolic nature of the primitive bear hunt – while often interesting, sometimes
distract more than they explain. Again, more citations might have helped.
Statements such as ‘For it is a sad truth that a natural response to having neighbours
is to want to kill them’ (55) have the intended consequence of provoking thought,
but one becomes curious regarding their anthropological support. On the whole, the
introduction presents tantalizing fragments, which Lord leaves to the reader to
assemble into a coherent whole.
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In her chapter on the Bulgarian Pomaks, Danova notes the confusion surrounding
the terms ‘nation, nationality, national identity, ethnicity, ethnic identity, and cultural
identity’ (164). While this confusion is unfortunately reproduced in the present volume
(especially in the final chapter), the reader may be sympathetic. For how should one
describe the Pomaks, who are native Bulgarian speakers (while often claiming Turkish
as their mother tongue); Muslims (although employing numerous ‘crypto-Christian’
practices); and not at all fond of the term ‘Pomak’ – which itself appears to be one of
the only consistent markers of the group’s identity? This complexity is just one
example of what makes some of the case studies in this book interesting.
While the term ‘parallel cultures’ only emerges in two chapters, the contributions
have in common a focus on the often marginal identities which have coexisted with
the hegemonic nation(-state) identities. In most cases, these local variants have been
forced into some uneasy accommodation with the modern system. Thus, for the
Hungarians of Transylvania, who were inclined to think of themselves as members of
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a multicultural local population (including also Saxons and Szekels), the emergence of
the Romanian and Hungarian nation-states has forced them to think primarily in terms
of Hungarian identity. The Pomaks also, surrounded by the codified and
internationally-accepted Bulgarian and Turk ethnicities, often find themselves
assigned (and assign themselves) to one of these two larger identity groups. But not all
the stories in the volume are of cultural integration. While the Pomaks may at times be
trying to will themselves out of existence, the Poleshuks of Belarus – or at least a
cultural élite speaking a vernacular akin to Belarussian and Ukrainian – are trying to
do just the opposite by claiming an ethnic identity corresponding to their (somewhat
ambiguous) linguistic one.
For the most part, these case studies are well-written, sensitive to recent
scholarship on ethnicity, and, while generally sympathetic to the identity groups they
cover, nevertheless critical of ethnic historical claims. This includes an understanding
that ethnic identities are constantly in flux, whether one views them objectively or
subjectively. The chapter on Donetsk is perhaps the exception. The author is concerned
with Ukraine’s de facto adherence to its laws on ethnicity; even though she notes the
presence of processes of assimilation and integration, she ultimately treats ethnic
identity as a fairly stable formulation. Strietska-Ilina’s final chapter, devoted to a
discussion of identity in the Russian Federation as a whole, is also concerned with
legal and political questions. She laments the Soviet experiment with ethnic
federalism, responsible for reifying a host of would-be nations, arguing that it must
gradually give way to a civic conception of identity, focused on the individual rather
than the collective.
The point many of the authors ultimately make is that even with the global
homogenization brought about by the hegemonic idea and system of the nation-
state, processes of ethnic change will always throw up culturally anomalous
populations which are not readily accommodated in an (artificially) monocultural
environment. The absence of the editor’s blue pencil, more than anything else,
drowns out some of the laudable arguments of this work. A more coherent structure
in the introduction would have helped marshal Lord’s wide-ranging arguments into
a more assimilable form, while setting the stage for the following contributions,
allowing the book to actually fulfil its stated goal of being ‘suitable as a subsidiary
text for undergraduate courses’ It might also have illuminated the concept of
‘parallel cultures’ itself, beyond its only occasional mention. Quite reasonably, the
contributors do not attempt to hide their normative views; several of them appear
to be searching for a prescription for Eastern Europe’s particular problems.
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However, in light of the post-communist world’s entrenched ethnic élites, 70-plus
years of ethnic territorial organization, and a western political system that
privileges the national state, Strietska-Ilina’s conclusions that change will be
difficult appear sadly accurate.

DANIEL A. KRONENFELD
University of California, Berkeley

David Powell, Nationhood and Identity. The British State since 1800. London & New
York: I.B.Tauris, 2002. Pp.xiii + 314. $65.00 (hbk); $24.50 (pbk) ISBNs 1 86064 516
X and 1 86064 517 8

In Nationhood and Identity, David Powell sets himself three objectives: to explain the
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evolution of the British state over the past 200 years; to assess the degree to which that
British state fostered a British ‘nationality’ above or alongside its component English,
Irish, Scottish and Welsh identities, and to place both developments in their foreign and
imperial contexts. He succeeds brilliantly in the first and third of these, but stumbles,
understandably, over the complexities of ‘state’, ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’, referring
alternatively to Britain as a ‘national’ state and a ‘supra-national state’. It was, of course,
both, and his conclusion, that ‘Britons’ had multiple, or multi-layered, identities,
activated according to context and stimuli, is eminently sensible, if rather obvious. The
British state was largely, to borrow Seeley’s language, the expansion of England, with
Wales, Scotland and Ireland progressively integrated into the English parliamentary
monarchy, a process achieved or confirmed by force. The state preceded the nation, and
in so far as there was a British identity, it grew up within and under the state.
Yet neither the state nor the identity was coterminous with the British Isles. Wales,
integrated earliest and most completely in administrative terms, maintained a cultural
and linguistic awareness of its distinct identity; Scotland retained its separate church,
legal and educational systems, and was subsequently mollified by partial
administrative devolution. Both, however, could identify with the English/British past
of a Protestant state defending its integrity against the leading Catholic powers of
continental Europe, Spain and France, and as a parliamentary state against the
autocracy of those powers. Integration was further aided by industrialization, which
created in South Wales, the central belt of Scotland and northern England a
transnational industrial culture and class identity, the development of rail and road
networks that drew the mainland communities together, and the growth of mass
communications combined with widening literacy in a common language.
Despite some Anglo-Saxon/Celt tensions, there was also an ethnic or racial
dimension, self-assigned attributes assumed to pertain exclusively to the ‘British’ as a
governing and imperial ‘race’ that set it apart from, and above, others. Powell
underestimates this racial element, but rightly emphasizes the empire as ‘crucial to the
idea of a British identity’, that extended far beyond Britain itself. The readiness of
England, despite, or because of, being manifestly the predominant partner, to share
power and opportunity at home and throughout the empire alleviated potentially
dangerous sources of friction. The empire was a shared enterprise in a ‘Greater
Britain’ that was more than just the expansion of England in which various identities,
whether ‘national’, regional, or class might be submerged. When Sir Edmund Barton,
prime minister of Australia, described France as ‘our nearest neighbour across the
Channel’, he was reflecting this multi-layered identity, not ignorance of geography.
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The exception was Ireland. Southern, Catholic, ‘nationalist’ Ireland never

identified with Britain, whilst loyalty to the British state in Protestant Ulster was so
fierce that it paradoxically aroused revolt against the state. Ireland provides the
example, which Powell uses skilfully, of an alternative line of development that
highlights the degree to which the rest of Britain and the empire was conscious of
being ‘British’ within a unitary state. Powell thus sees the period 1922–64, between
the conclusion of the struggle for Irish Home Rule and the re-emergence in the 1960s
of the Irish ‘troubles’, together with demands from Scotland and Wales for devolution
in recognition of their own distinctive nationality, as the period when Britain came
closest to becoming ‘one nation’.
Even then, however, a common language, economic development and political and
administrative integration did not prevent identification as ‘British’ from being more
than conditional. From Powell’s account there appears to have been two crucial factors
that kept local nationalism at bay: war and success. Whatever their differences, the
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component parts of the British imperial state drew together against external threats.
The loss of empire and international status in the mid-twentieth century removed a
source of both careers and pride; industrial decline and aggressive centralization by the
very English Conservatism of Mrs Thatcher chafed ‘national’ sensitivities. As the
threat from continental Europe vanished, the benefits of being ‘British’ emotionally
and materially were no longer so obvious, a Europe of regions appeared to offer
viability and security to smaller units, and the fault lines of superimposed state
‘nationalism’ grew wider.
The ambitious nature of Powell’s project becomes clear at this point. Nationalism
has been a central factor in nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, but it is a
slippery concept. With the possible exception of Germany, united like Britain from
above by one dominant ‘sub-state’, European nationalism manifested itself as a revolt
against the existing state. In this revolutionary form it was inseparable from
citizenship. But citizenship has at best a limited application to a Britain that has no
constitution, the people are ‘subjects’, and the elected parliament can suspend
elections at any time and for any length of time. ‘Britain’ was a nation imposed, not a
nation aroused. Yet it is only through reading this book that such complexities become
apparent. If it never quite lives up to the promise of its title, it amply fulfils that of the
sub-title. Powell has a rare ability to condense the machinations of politics and to
combine detail with remarkable breadth. Despite its problems with the concept of
nationalism, this book is, quite simply, a superb history of the political and
constitutional evolution of modern Britain and the modern British state that should be
at the top of the list for any teacher in search of a text.

ALAN SYKES
St. Andrews University