Topic 1

How can a nation be defined?

What is the classical definition of nationalism?

What are the four different shades of meaning of nationalism?

Why couldn't the struggle against monarchy in Eastern Europe unite society?

What are the results of classification policy in different states?

What – according to Hans Kohn – is the difference between western and eastern

nationalisms?

What is Kohn’s basic argument for these differences?

What is the two-dimensional model of nationalism?

Describe the content of its quadrants.

What are the main empirical findings of the International Social Survey Program?

The concepts of nations and states are linked; they are also related to those of nationality, race,

ethnicity, and nationalism. The concept of nation is sociological as opposed to the idea of state

which is more of a legal, territorial, and political entity. A nation can be defined as a group of

people who share a common identity, traditions, history, aspirations, interests, language, religion

and culture. Although the primary definition of a nation refers to a political body of citizens

whose collective sovereignty manifests itself in a state, not all national groups express their

political will in the state. Related to the concept of nation is the term ethnic group or ethnicity. In

Greek ethnic or ethnos means nation. Broadly speaking, ethnic groups are social groups defined

by nationality, race, religion, or a combination of the three.

Nationalism is a commonly used concept in the social sciences, and yet it is difficult to define

precisely. The classical texts on nationalism have referred to it as a political principle or an

ideological movement that can use culture or ethnicity instrumentally, for political goals.

According to Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism, 1983), nationalism is a historical process

based on “a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be

congruent”. Thus, for Gellner, it is not vital for a nation to have ethnic ties with the past or

cultural roots, because nationalism can create those roots without any preconditions or
connection to antiquity. According to Anthony Smith (National Identity, 1991), these roots

cannot be invented ex nihilo. Thus any study on the emergence of nations would be incomplete

without a consideration of the cultural and social foundations of nationhood.

To the classical conceptualization of nationalism, Karl Deutsch (Nationalism and Social

Communication, 1966) adds an element of social communication. In order to create social

cohesion or generate the feeling of differentiation against the other groups, nationalism needs to

be effectively articulated. For this reason, frequency and density of social communication, or

what Deutsch referred to as “communicative efficiency,” emerges as an important factor for the

development of nationalism. The role of leaders in articulating the content of nationalism is as

important as having a common linguistic and cultural background. In a similar vein, Benedict

Anderson (Imagined Communities, 1991) emphasizes the centrality of social communication in

the articulation of nationalism. Thus the definition of nationalism that emerges from the classical

tradition emphasizes the importance of territoriality, collective past, and cultural unity. As a

political ideology, nationalism incorporates these elements to further generate and articulate

them according to the political claims of certain groups. These groups may or may not have

common cultural traditions and histories, but essential to nationalism is the construction of those

cultural narratives for the purpose of political mobilization.

Nationalism includes four different shades of meaning: nationalism as a sentiment, nationalism

as an actual historical process, nationalism as a theory, and nationalism as an ideology of

political activities. As a sentiment, nationalism is fed by romanticism, the notion that each nation

has its unique place in history. The romantic idea, which started in Germany in the eighteenth

century and spread to other countries, idealized the human heart and spirit of the people against

the rationalism of the Enlightenment. It glorified the idea of the nation-state and national culture

as an expression of deep attachment to a nation and culture.

As a historical process, nationalism nourished and promoted the liberation movements that

sparked the creation of independent nation-states. Nationalism in Western Europe arose during

the struggle of the third estate against monarchical rule for popular representation. This meant

the abolition of the estate system and the transformation of the entire people of the state into a
nation. The French revolution in 1789 was used as the classic example of a nation defined

primarily by the democratic nature of the state. Everybody that adhered to the slogan of „liberty,

equality and fraternity‟ was imagined to belong to the new French nation.

In Western Europe the pain of the nation-building process was mitigated by the social benefits of

democracy. A different situation was observed in Eastern Europe, where ethno-cultural identity

coincided with the estate-class status. Here the struggle against the monarchy could not unite the

society divided by estate-class partitions. In Russia nationalism emerged in the last decades of

the Russian Empire as a response of ethnic and religious minorities to systematic discrimination

by the authorities. Therefore, such a struggle was carried out by separate ethno-cultural groups

separately, and their task was not to liberate the whole society, but to achieve their own goals,

which in this case assumed an ethnic look.

Theories about nationalism attempt to explain why some people and nations develop a high sense

of national or ethnic identity, whereas others do not. Nationalism as an ideology of political

activities employs myths, ideas, propaganda, and courses of action (tactics, strategies, goals) to

mobilize support for the creation of a nation-state, such as that of Israel in 1948.

There are key motives manifested in the writings of nationalists everywhere that a nation

must have its own character and be different from all others. But that does not mean that a

given society is doomed to split along ethnic lines. On the contrary, it is often a question of a

classification policy. A classification based on race (USA) leads to a racial split. If it is based

on a religious basis (Northern Ireland), then the split takes on a religious form. If the main

criterion for accounting for the population is the native language (Anglophone and

Francophone in Canada), then inter-communal relationships are colored by the factor of

language loyalty. Sometimes an ethnic is combined with a confessional one. Finally, if a

country consists of politically formed regions (Italy), then regionalism is possible, which

suppresses ethnicity. However, linguistic, religious, racial or cultural diversity itself does not

inevitably lead to inevitable conflict, of which Switzerland is a prime example. Conflicts arise

when such categorization leads to legal inequality.

Scholars from different disciplines have proposed typologies of nationalism. One of the earliest

accounts belongs to Hans Kohn (The Idea of Nationalism, 1944), who distinguished between
Western and Eastern varieties. Kohn suggested that in the “western world,” by which he meant

France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States, nationalism appeared to be

a political phenomenon, either concomitant with or following the establishment of the modern

sovereign state. The need for nation building provided western nationalism with rational and

pragmatic motivations. Kohn asserted that nationalism in the western world was based on the

free will of members of a society to be interconnected through the obligations of social contact.

For Kohn, western nationalism resulted from the diffusion of ideas of the French Revolution and

of the Reformation and intertwined with notions of individual liberty. Consequently, the

“western nation” was civic and political rather than ethnic and cultural.

According to Kohn, matters are different in the case of eastern nationalism, which emerged in

Asia and in Central and Eastern Europe. Partly because of a prevailing sociopolitical

backwardness, eastern nationalism suffered from an inferiority complex, taking a more primitive

and radical shape. In comparison to its western counterpart, the eastern vision of nationhood was

ascriptive (already given) rather than voluntaristic (chosen). It was organic and exclusive, based

on kinship, rather than political and inclusive, based on citizenship. It mythologized the nations

past and idealized the belief in a collective national destiny, whereas nationalism in the west was

more focused on the “struggles of the present” than on “dreams of the future”.

Ethnic nationalism has been closely identified with regions of the world where the bonds of

popular cultural identity, as they formed in the modern era, tended to call into question existing

political boundaries and state formations rather than reinforce them. Ethnic nationalism could

take the form of unificatory movements cutting across state borders, as in the case of nineteenth-

century German nationalism. It could also manifest itself as autonomist, separatist, or irredentist

movements that challenged the cohesion of territorially contiguous, multicultural polities such as

the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, the Russian empire and its Soviet successor state, or indeed

the very multiethnic states (such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) that arose in the wake of the

Eurasian multinational empires‟ collapse during and after World War I.

Kohn‟s basic argument was that in Western Europe (his examples were France, the UK, The

Netherlands and Switzerland), the borders of the state were settled prior to the rise of

nationalism, which created a strong focus on the new democratic procedures that could

legitimize the existing state. In contrast, the borders in Eastern Europe were settled after the rise

of nationalism, which created a strong focus on the ethnic/cultural dimension of nationhood.

Two-dimensional model of nationalism

The model is based on the „ethnic-civic‟ distinction in the International Social Survey Program

(1995, 2003, 2013). Most studies use the seven ISSP items where respondents are asked what it

means to be „truly‟ American, Russian, Dutch, etc.

The upper left quadrant

In the upper left republican quadrant, one largely finds the Northern European countries. France

is in the republican quadrant. However, by 2013 it is not the country with the most republican

public. The two countries with the most clear-cut republican publics are Sweden and the

Netherlands. Denmark, Switzerland and Belgium are also in the upper left republican quadrant.

In conflict with Kohn‟s division, Germany, Estonia Slovenia and Taiwan are found in this

quadrant. Norway, Finland and Iceland are „Western‟ countries, but their borders were settled

late in history.

Those located in the upper left quadrant find most of the criteria unimportant, especially the

criteria about having been born in the country, to have lived most of one‟s life in the country and

to belong to the dominant religion. They tend to disagree with the statement that national TV

stations should give priority to national programs, and they find family background to be

unimportant for being a real member. Finally, they answer, on average, that immigration should

„remain the same‟ or „increase a little‟. In relation to the current debate about immigration,

especially in Western Europe, the classic republican idea is that migrants should only assimilate

to the national democratic political community. The upper left quadrant could be labeled

„republicanism‟. The analysis locates 24% all respondents in this quadrant.

The upper right quadrant

In the upper right national liberal quadrant, one finds the settler societies such as Australia, the
USA and Canada together with Portugal and Latvia. The UK is located at the border between the

national conservative and national liberal quadrant. Those located in the upper right quadrant

distinguish themselves by finding it important that members respect the law, speak the language

and feel national. This indicates a mobilization of nationalist attitudes but with an emphasis on

civic aspects. Those in the upper right quadrant tend to answer that they feel very close to the

country and that migration should „decrease a little‟. The American nation-building process

provides a historical exemplification of the mobilization of nationalistic attitudes with a civic

dominance. The notion of an American melting pot is a clear example of a nation-building

project with a strong emphasis on assimilation of migrants and natives. Migrants are asked to

assimilate into the state and nation that are to come. Thus, national liberalism tends to be forward

looking with a strong demand for assimilation. This segment is labeled „national liberalism‟. It

fits the historical account that mobilized civic nationalism is particular widespread in settler

societies. The analysis locates 25% of all respondents in this quadrant.

The USA is the most clear-cut example of having a public with an overrepresentation of national

liberals. The changes in perceptions of nationhood among Canadians are remarkable. In 1995,

Canada had on overrepresentation of republicans, which positioned the country together with the

Netherlands and Sweden. In 1995, only 52% of Canadians found it important to have been born

in the country, only 55% found it important to have lived most of one‟s life in Canada and only

26% found it important to be Christian. In 2003, the shares had increased to 82% (born in the

country), 83% (to have lived most of one‟s life in Canada) and 54% (important to be Christian).

The largest pitfall in the application of Kohn‟s framework is maybe the tendency to neglect the

within-country variation in perceptions of nationhood. The American two-party system does not

allow for much variation, but still, there was a difference in the average positioning of the

Democratic voters (voted for Obama in 2012) and the Republican voters (voted for Romney in

2012). Both voter groups are by comparative standards „civic-minded‟, but the Republican voters

were more mobilized than the Democrats, i.e. the former tended to find the criteria more

important. By international standards, there is a stronger emphasis on national liberal perceptions

of nationhood in the USA than in most other countries. The multi-party system in the three other
countries allows for more variation across voters of different political parties.

The lower right quadrant

Those in the lower right quadrant distinguish themselves by finding it important to belong to the

dominant religion in the country, to have been born in the country and to have lived most of

one‟s life in the country in order to be „really‟ Italian, Russian, Turkish, etc. This is the

mobilized ethnic nationalistic segment. Those answering „very proud‟ of their national identity

tend to be located in the lower right quadrant. Those in the lower right quadrant also tend to

answer that migration should be „decreased a lot‟. They also find it important to have family

background in the country in order to be a real member. The lower right quadrant is a national

conservative segment. For national conservatives, the nation is not an imagined community. It is

a historical given cultural community on which the political rule rests. Therefore, immigration

from cultural distant areas is easily seen as a challenge for the nation.

In accordance with Kohn‟s historical division, one finds most of the non-Western countries in

the national conservative quadrant. East European countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria,

Hungary, Czech Republic, Lithuania together with neighboring Russia and Georgia are located

here. So is Austria and Italy. In accordance with Kohn, one also finds countries with late settled

state borders such as the Philippines, Venezuela, India, Turkey, Mexico, Uruguay, Chile, South

Korea and South Africa in the lower right national conservative quadrant. South Africa is

positioned as the country with the most clear-cut national conservative public.

The lower left quadrant

The segment in the lower left quadrant generally finds the criteria unimportant but is at the same

time dominated by ethnic national perceptions. Those located in the lower left quadrant

distinguish themselves by finding it unimportant to be able to speak the language, feel national

and respect the law. Those located here distinguish themselves by being „not proud at all‟ or „not

very proud‟ of their nationality. Many also answer that they do not feel „close at all‟ or „not very

close‟ to the nation. They also distinguish themselves by answering that migration should be

„increased a lot‟ and that it is better for a society „if groups maintain their distinct customs and

traditions‟. In lack of a better term, it will be labeled „deconstructivism‟. The analysis locates

18% of all respondents in this quadrant.

Japan is stably located in the lower left quadrant, which could come as a surprise. This country

exemplifies a case of widespread deconstructivism. The historical experience with national

conservatism combined with a somewhat unsettled relationship with democracy provides an

explanation for the position in the lower left quadrant. Symbolically, the deconstructivism is

reflected in the absence of a national army.

The lower left quadrant does not fit Kohn‟s dichotomy. Judged by the 2013 data, in Ireland,

Israel, Croatia, Spain and Japan, there is an overrepresentation of citizens that find the criteria

unimportant but are still dominated by ethnic perceptions of nationhood. Possible interpretation

may be that this is primarily to do with collective memories of violence attached to mobilized

nationalism. This would explain evidence of low mobilization alongside a somewhat unsettled

democratic political system as well as the absence of civic elements.

One of the main empirical findings was that national perceptions undergo changes. Many of the

most remarkable changes occurred in Eastern European countries, which after the breakdown of

the Soviet Union struggled to develop new and stable perceptions of nationhood. Judged by the

2013 data, there are clear indications of an ethnic backlash in countries such as Hungary,

Slovakia and the Czech Republic. However, changes can also occur in more stable nation states

such as Canada, which moved from an un-mobilized to a mobilized version of civic nationalism

(upper right quadrant). It is hard to find any overarching logic in the time trends. There is no

indication of a global move towards national conservatism, as is sometimes stated in public

debate, or a global move towards republicanism in Western countries. On the contrary,

contemporary nation states seem to be in a constant internal dispute about the content of the

national community – which within the last two decades has pushed countries in different

directions.
Topic 2

What is primordialism? What are the four types of primordialist approach?

What are the main themes of the nationalist discourse?

What are the main features of the socio-biological discourse?

What are the culturalist discourse’s three main ideas?

What are the two versions of perennialism?

What is ethnosymbolism?

What are – according to Anthony D. Smith – the six main attributes of earlier

ethnic communities (ethnies)?

What are the two main patterns of ethnies’ formation?

What are – according to Anthony D. Smith – the mechanisms of ethnic self-renewal?

What is a lateral route to becoming a nation?

What is a vernacular route to becoming a nation?

Primordialism

„Primordialism‟ is an umbrella term used to describe the belief that nationality is a „natural‟ part

of human beings. This was for some time the dominant paradigm among mostly historians. It is

generally thought that Edward Shils (American sociologist 1910-1995) is the first to have

employed the term to describe relationships within the family: „a certain ineffable significance is

attributed to the tie of blood‟.

It is possible to identify four different versions of primordialism: the „nationalist‟,

„sociobiological‟, „culturalist‟ and „perennialist‟ approaches. The common denominator of these

approaches is their belief in the naturalness and/or antiquity of nations.

The nationalist thesis

For the nationalists, nationality is an inherent attribute of the human condition. The nationalists

believe that humanity is divided into distinct, objectively identifiable nations. Human beings can

only fulfill themselves and flourish if they belong to a national community, the membership of

which overrides all other forms of belonging. The nation is the sole depository of sovereignty

and the only source of political power and legitimacy. Second, there is the theme of golden age:
„It is impossible to exaggerate what the whole world – and in particular the Hellenic world –

owes to the Egyptian world.‟ Third, there is the theme of the superiority of the national culture.

Fourth, there is the theme of periods of recess, from which the nation is destined to „awaken‟.

Finally, there is the theme of the national hero, who comes and awakens the nation.

The sociobiological approach (American anthropologist Pierre van den Berghe 1933-2019)

„There is indeed an objective, external basis to the existence of such groups‟ without denying

that these groups are also socially constructed and changeable. „In simplest terms, the socio-

biological view of these groups is that they are fundamentally defined by common descent and

maintained by endogamy. Ethnicity, thus, is simply kinship writ large‟. Ethnic groups, races and

nations „are super-families of (distant) relatives, real or putative, who tend to intermarry, and

who are knit together by vertical ties of descent reinforced by horizontal ties of marriage‟. If that

is the case, then how do we recognize our „kin‟? According to van den Berghe, „only a few of the

world‟s societies use primarily morphological phenotypes to define themselves‟. It follows that

cultural criteria of group membership are more salient than physical ones. Language is

particularly useful in this respect because „ethnic affiliation can be quickly ascertained through

speech and is not easily faked‟.

Noting that kin selection does not explain all of human sociality, van den Berghe identifies two

additional mechanisms: reciprocity and coercion. „The larger and the more complex a society

becomes, the greater the importance of reciprocity‟. Moreover, while kin selection, real or

putative, is more dominant in intra-group relations, coercion becomes the rule in interethnic (or

interracial) relationships. Van den Berghe concedes that ethnic groups appear and disappear. But

all this construction, reconstruction and deconstruction remains firmly anchored in the reality of

„socially perceived, biological descent‟ (2001b: 274). „Ethnies have existed since the dawn of

history‟ (2005: 115). We may speak of nationalism, when a sense of belonging to an ethnie is

transformed into a demand for political autonomy or independence. A nation, in this sense, is

simply „a politically conscious ethnie‟ (2001b: 273).

The culturalist approach

The culturalist approach is generally associated with the works of Edward Shils and Clifford

Geertz (American anthropologist 1926-2006). Their concept of primordialism contains three

main ideas:

First, primordial identities or attachments are „given‟, prior to all experience and interaction ,

primordial attachments are „natural‟. They have no social source. Second, primordial

sentiments are overpowering: if an individual is a member of a group, he or she necessarily feels

certain attachments to that group. Third, primordialism is essentially a question of emotion.

Geertz nor Shils are not saying that the world is constituted by an objective primordial reality,

only that many of us believe in primordial objects and feel their power.

Perennialism

A British historical sociologist Anthony Smith (1939–2016) introduces the term „perennialism‟

to refer to those who believe in the historical antiquity of the „nation‟, its perennial character.

The perennialists do not treat the nation as a „fact of nature‟; but they see it as a constant and

fundamental feature of human life throughout recorded history. There are two versions of

perennialism, according to Smith. The first, what he calls „continuous perennialism‟, sees the

roots of modern nations stretching back several centuries – even millennia in a few cases – into

the distant past. This version stresses „continuity‟, pointing to cultural continuities and identities

over long time spans, which link medieval or ancient nations to their modern counterparts. The

second version, „recurrent perennialism‟, refers to those who regard the nation as „a category

of human association that can be found everywhere throughout history‟. Particular nations may

come and go, but the nation itself is ubiquitous and, as a form of association and collective

identity, „recurrent‟.

Adrian Hastings (English historian 1929–2001) begins his analysis by defining ethnicity as „a

group of people with a shared cultural identity and spoken language‟. The nation is a far more

self-conscious community than ethnicity; formed from one or more ethnicities and identified

with a literature of its own, „it possesses or claims the right to political identity and autonomy as

a people, together with the control of specific territory‟. This is indeed Hastings‟ central thesis:

modern nations can only grow out of certain ethnicities, under the impact of the development of
a vernacular and the pressures of the state. It is true that every ethnicity did not become a

nation, but many have done so. The defining origin of the nation needs to be located in an age of

the shaping of medieval society. Ethnicities turn into nations at the point when their specific

vernacular moves from an oral to written usage to the extent that it is being regularly employed

for the production of a literature, and particularly for the translation of the Bible. The Bible

provided, for the Christian world at least, the original model of the nation. Without it and its

Christian interpretation, nations and nationalism, as we know them, could have never existed.

A critique of primordialism

There are several problems with primordialist approaches.

The nature of ethnic and national ties

One common denominator of the primordialists is their tendency to take ethnic and national

identities as „given‟, or as facts of nature. They are transmitted from one generation to the next

with their „essential‟ characteristics unchanged; they are thus fixed, or static. This view has been

undermined by a number of studies which stress the „socially constructed‟ nature of ethnic and

national identities. Their contents are continuously negotiated and redefined in each generation

as groups react to changing circumstances.

The origins of ethnic and national ties

According to critics, primordialists treat the history of modern nations as a process which tends

towards a predetermined outcome – starting from their rudimentary beginnings in the ancient or

medieval epochs to present-day nation-states. But this „prehistory‟ consists of a multiplicity of

qualitatively distinct events, none of which imply the subsequent nation. More importantly, these

events do not belong to the history of one particular nation. Such presumably „universal‟ factors

as blood ties, kinship relationships, are not able to explain why only a small proportion of ethnic

groups become aware of their common identity, while others disappear in the mists of history.

The date of emergence of nations

At this point that the question of „dating‟ the origins of nations goes to the heart of the theoretical

debate on nationalism. What primordialism does recognize is that, despite changes in their

structural form, „there have always been primordial attachments. This is the central idea behind
perennialist interpretations which can be considered as a milder version of primordialism, for

they reject the nationalist belief in the „naturalness of nations, while retaining a belief in their

antiquity.

Many of the states and empires in history ruled over diverse populations. Neither the state

personnel, nor the subject population were ethnically homogeneous, and the rulers more often

than not had a different ethnicity than the population they ruled over. Ethnicity was not, and had

never been, the primary basis of identification for the members of these multinational empires.

For many, locality or religion remained a strong anchor of identity until well into the nineteenth

century. Even then, ethnicity was one identity among many, and certainly not the most

important.

A key problem faced by scholars when dating the emergence of nations is that national

consciousness is a mass, not an elite phenomenon, and the masses until quite recently isolated in

rural pockets and being semi- or totally illiterate, were quite mute with regard to their sense of

group identity(ies). Scholars have been necessarily largely dependent upon the written word for

their evidence, yet it has been the elites who have chronicled history.

Primordialism today

The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of studies which resuscitated the primordialism.

There were a number of factors which led to the formation of nations in pre-modern times. Law,

for example, was such a factor in ancient Israel; government officials were placed throughout the

land to administer it and to collect taxes. Moreover, the Israelite law codes drew a distinction

between the “native of the land”, the Israelite, to whom the law applied, and the foreigner.

Another important factor in the formation of a distinctive culture was religion. All these

premodern societies had a number of characteristics that justify considering them nations: a self-

designating name; a written history; a cultural uniformity, often as a result of religion; legal

codes; an authoritative centre, and a conception of a bounded territory.

Ethnosymbolism
According to Anthony D. Smith, the leading proponent of ethnosymbolic approach, it stresses

the need for an analysis of collective cultural identities over la longue durée (a time span of

many centuries), the importance of continuity, recurrence and appropriation as different modes

of connecting the national past, present and future; the significance of pre-existing ethnic

communities, or ethnies, in the formation of modern nations.

Ethnosymbolists form a more homogeneous category than primordialists. For them, the rise of

modern nations needs to be contextualized within the larger phenomenon of ethnicity which

shaped them. Ethnic identities change more slowly than is generally assumed; once formed, they

tend to be exceptionally durable to persist over many generations, even centuries.

Ethnosymbolists argue that a greater measure of continuity exists between „traditional‟ and

„modern‟, or „agrarian‟ and „industrial‟ eras. Smith contends that such an approach is more

helpful than its alternatives in at least three ways. First, it helps to explain which populations are

likely to start a nationalist movement under certain conditions and what the content of this

movement would be. Second, it enables us to understand the important role of memories,

values, myths and symbols. Finally, the ethnosymbolist approach explains why and how

nationalism is able to generate such a widespread popular support.

According to Smith, it was John A. Armstrong (American political scientist 1922–2010) who

first underlined the significance of la longue durée for the study of nationalism in his Nations

before Nationalism (1982). For Armstrong, contemporary nationalism is nothing but the final

stage of a larger cycle of ethnic consciousness reaching back to the earliest forms of collective

organization. The most important feature of this consciousness, according to Armstrong, is its

persistence. Hence the formation of ethnic identities should be examined in a time dimension of

many centuries, similar to the longue durée perspective emphasized by the Annales school of

French historiography.

Armstrong argues that groups tend to define themselves not by referense to their own

characteristics but by comparison to strangers. It follows that there can be no fixed „character‟ or

„essence‟ for the group and it makes more sense to focus on the boundary mechanisms instead of

objective group characteristics. For Armstrong, this attitudinal approach affords many

advantages. First, it makes room for changes in the cultural and the biological content of the
group as long as the boundary mechanisms are maintained. Second, it shows that ethnic groups

are not necessarily based on the occupation of particular; exclusive territories. The key to

understanding ethnic identification is the „uncanny experience of confronting others‟ who

remained mute in response to attempts at communication. Inability to communicate initiates the

process of „differentiation‟ which in turn brings a recognition of ethnic belonging. While

standing firm on his belief that nations did exist before nationalism he nevertheless agrees that,

like other human identities, national identity had been an invention. But the inventors drew their

constructs upon the repertory of pre-existing group characteristics.

It was indeed Smith who explored these issues further and elaborated the framework of analysis

developed by Armstrong. His central thesis is that modern nations cannot be understood

without taking pre-existing ethnic components into account. According to Smith, the problem

with modernist theories is that they provide a definition, not of the nation per se, but of a

particular kind of nation – the modern nation. It reflects the characteristics of eighteenth – and

nineteenth – century nations in Western Europe and America, hence it is partial and Eurocentric.

He proposes the definition of the nation, derived to a large extent from the assumptions of

nationalists: a nation is a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths

and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights

and duties for all members.

For Smith, the answer to the nations‟ origin should be sought in earlier ethnic communities (he

prefers to use the French term ethnie) since pre-modern identities and legacies form the bedrock

of many contemporary nations. He posits six main attributes for such communities: a

collective proper name, a myth of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more

differentiating elements of a common culture, an association with a specific homeland, a sense of

solidarity for significant sectors of the population.

Smith identifies two main patterns of ethnie formation: coalescence and division. By

coalescence he means the coming together of separate units. By division he means subdivision

through fission when a part of the ethnic community leaves it to form a new unit. Ethnies, once

formed, tend to be exceptionally durable. There are certain events that generate profound
changes in the cultural contents of ethnic identities. Among these are war and conquest, exile and

enslavement, the influx of immigrants and religious conversion. But even the most radical

changes cannot destroy the sense of continuity and common ethnicity. This is partly due to the

existence of a number of external forces that help to crystallize ethnic identities and ensure their

persistence over long periods. Of these, state-making, military, mobilization and organized

religion are the most crucial.

In the light of these observations, Smith sets out to specify the main mechanisms of ethnic self-

renewal. The first such mechanism is „religious reform‟. Groups who fell prey to religious

conservatism tried to compensate for the failure to introduce reforms by turning to other forms of

self-renewal. The second mechanism is „cultural borrowing‟, in the sense of controlled contact

and selective cultural exchange between different communities. The third mechanism is

„popular participation‟. The popular movements for greater participation in the political system

saved many ethnies from withering away by generating a missionary zeal among the participants

of these movements. The final mechanism of ethnic self-renewal identified by Smith is „myths

of ethnic election‟ (or ethnic choseness). According to Smith, ethnies that lack such myths

tended to be absorbed by others after losing their independence.

Together, these four mechanisms ensure the survival of certain ethnic communities across the

centuries despite changes in their demographic composition and cultural contents. These

mechanisms also lead to the gradual formation of what Smith terms „ethnic cores‟. Smith

observes that most latter-day nations are constructed around a dominant ethnie, which annexed

or attracted other ethnic communities into the state it founded and to which it gave a name and a

cultural character.

According to Smith, there are two types of ethnic community, the „lateral‟ (aristocratic) and the

„vertical‟ (demotic). These two types gave birth to different patterns of nation formation.

„Lateral‟ ethnies were generally composed of aristocrats and higher clergy, though in some cases

they might also include bureaucrats, high military officials and richer merchants. Smith explains
his choice of the term „lateral‟ by pointing out that these ethnies were at once socially confined

to the upper strata and geographically spread out to form close links with the upper echelons of

neighbouring lateral ethnies. On the contrary, „vertical‟ ethnies were more compact and popular.

Their culture was diffused to other sections of the population as well. Social cleavages were not

underpinned by cultural differences. As a result of this, the ethnic bond was more intense and

exclusive, and the barriers to admission were much higher.

These two types of ethnic communities followed different trajectories in the process of becoming

a nation. Smith calls the first, lateral, route ‘bureaucratic incorporation’. The survival of

aristocratic ethnic communities depended to a large extent on their capacity to incorporate other

strata of the population within their cultural orbit. This was most successfully realized in

Western Europe. In England, France, Spain and Sweden, the dominant ethnie was able to

incorporate the middle classes and peripheral regions into the elite culture. According to Smith,

the primary vehicle in this process was the newly emerging bureaucratic state. The state was able

to diffuse the dominant culture down the social scale. The major constituents of the

„administrative revolution‟ were the extension of citizenship rights, conscription, taxation and

the building up of an infrastructure that linked distant parts of the realm.

The second route of nation formation, what Smith calls ‘vernacular mobilization’, set out from

a vertical ethnie. The influence of the bureaucratic state was more indirect in this case mainly

because vertical ethnies were usually subject communities. Here, the key mechanism of ethnic

persistence was organized religion. It was through, myths of chosenness, sacred texts and

scripts, and the prestige of the clergy that the survival of communal traditions was ensured. But

ethnic culture usually overlapped with the wider circle of religious culture and loyalty, and there

was no internal coercive agency to break the mould. Under these circumstances, the primary task

of the secular intelligentsia was to alter the basic relationship between ethnicity and religion.

This could be done in two ways: by a return to the historic home of the people and the repository

of their memories; and by a cult of golden ages. Smith identifies a third route of nation

formation, that of the immigrant nations which consist largely of the fragments of other ethnies,

particularly those from overseas. In countries like the United States, Canada and Australia,

colonist-immigrants have created a „providentialist frontier nationalism‟ and this has encouraged
a „plural‟ conception of the nation, which accepts, even celebrates, ethnic and cultural diversity

within an overarching political, legal, and linguistic national identity.

A critique of ethnosymbolism

Ethnosymbolists underestimate the differences between modern nations and earlier ethnic
communities.

There is a difference between modern nations and earlier ethnic communities, namely pre-modern

identities‟ lack of institutional basis. The only two institutions that could provide an institutional basis

to ethnic allegiances in pre-modern epochs, the church and the dynasty, were both translocal, and

carried at their heart an alternative, ultimately conflicting sense of identity to that of the ethnic group.

Topic 3

What is the essence of all modernist approaches?

What – according to Tom Nairn – was the main cause for the rise of nationalism?

What – according to Eric Hobsbawm – is the invented tradition?

What was its main goal?

Describe the two processes of this invention.

What historical period (which coincided with the emergence of mass politics) was

the apogee of invented traditions?

What were the three major innovations of that period?

What are – according to Eric Hobsbawm – the three stages of nationalism?

What are their main characteristics?

How does Ernest Gellner define nationalism?

What are – according to Ernest Gellner – the three main stages in human history?

What are – according to Ernest Gellner – the main characteristics of the agro-

literate society?

What are – according to Ernest Gellner – the main characteristics of the industrial

society?
What are – according to Ernest Gellner – the main causes for the alliance of state

and culture?

What are – according to Ernest Gellner – the stages of transition from a non-

nationalist order to a nationalist one?

What are the characteristics of these stages?

How did these stages play themselves out in four time zones in Europe?

How does Benedict Anderson define the nation?

What are – according to Benedict Anderson – the cultural systems that preceded

nationalism?

What was the magic of nationalism? Why did it turn chance into destiny?

What was the Christian conception of time?

How did nationalism change this conception?

What was the main instrument of this transformation?

What was the impact of so-called print-capitalism on the development of the

nation-state in Western Europe?

Why did the Reformation owe much of its success to print-capitalism?

What are the three factors that led to the dethronement of Latin?

What are the three ways the print-languages laid the bases for national

consciousnesses?

What caused the rise of so-called official nationalism in Europe after the 1820s?

The modernist approaches

The essence of modernist approaches

Nations and nationalism appeared in the last

two centuries and are the products of

specifically modern processes like capitalism,

industrialization, urbanization, secularism, and

the emergence of the modem bureaucratic

state.

Economic transformations

Tom Nairn, Scottish political scientist (b. 1932)

The Break-up of Britain (1977)

The roots of nationalism should be sought in

the dynamics of the world history in the era

between the French Revolution and the

present day. The gap between the core and

the world periphery was too great but the

direct involvement of the core would mean

foreign domination.

The elites of the backward countries thought

that only nationalism would propel them to

modernity. That is, economic and political

development could be achieved by a certain

sort of regression – by looking inwards,

drawing more deeply upon their indigenous

resources, resurrecting past folk heroes and

myths about themselves.

But the process did not end with the

emergence of nationalism in the peripheral

countries under the impact of uneven

development. Once successful, nationalism

became attractive to the core countries. In the

long term, core area nationalism was as

inevitable as peripheral nationalism.

Political transformations

Eric J. Hobsbawm, British historian

(1917-2012)

The Invention of Tradition (1983)

Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (1990)

Political transformations

Nations and nationalism are the products

of social engineering.

Nations establish continuity with a

suitable past and use history to strengthen

social cohesion. This continuity is largely

factitious. Invented traditions are

responses to novel situations which take

the form of reference to old situations.

Two processes of invention

The adaptation of old traditions and institutions

to new situations, as was the case with the

Catholic Church faced with new ideological and

political challenges.

The deliberate invention of new traditions, which

occurs only in periods of rapid social change when

the need to create order and unity becomes

paramount. This explains the importance of the

idea of ‘national community’ which can secure

cohesion in the face of fragmentation caused by

rapid industrialization.

Invention of tradition

The period from 1870 to 1914, which

coincides with the emergence of mass politics,

is the apogee of invented traditions.

The ‘invention of tradition’ was the main

strategy adopted by the ruling elites to

counter the threat posed by mass democracy.

Three major innovations of that period

The development of primary education, the

invention of public ceremonies, and the mass

production of public monuments. As a result

of these processes, nationalism became a new

secular religion, a substitute for social

cohesion through a national church, a royal

family, collective group self-presentations, or

other cohesive traditions.

Dual phenomena

Nations come into being only at a particular

stage of technological and economic

development. Nations and nationalism are

dual phenomena, ‘constructed essentially

from above, but which cannot be understood

unless also analyzed from below, that is, in

terms of the assumptions, hopes, needs,

longings and interests of ordinary people.’

Three stages of nationalism

First stage: from the French Revolution to

1918 (in two parts)

Part I: Between 1830 and 1870 - Democratic

nationalism of the ‘great nations’

Part II: Between 1870 and 1918 - the

reactionary nationalisms of the ‘small

nations’, mostly against the policies of the

Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian empires.

Three stages of nationalism

Second stage: from 1918 to 1950 (the ‘apogee

of nationalism’)

Nationalism acquired a strong association with

the left during the anti-fascist period, which

was subsequently reinforced by the

anti-imperial struggle in colonial countries.

Three stages of nationalism

Nationalisms of the nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries were ‘unificatory as well

as emancipatory’ and they were a ‘central fact

of historical transformation’. They were

functionally different from the nationalism of

the last period.

Three stages of nationalism

The last stage: the late twentieth century

These nationalisms were no longer ‘a major

vector of historical development’. They were

essentially negative and divisive. They seem to

be reactions of weakness and fear, attempts

to erect barricades to keep at bay the forces

of the modern world.

Social/cultural transformations

Ernest Gellner, British anthropologist

(1925-1995)

Nations and Nationalism (1983)

Definition of nationalism

Nationalism is primarily a political principle

which holds that the political and the national

unit should be congruent.

Three stages in human history

The hunter-gatherer

(there are no states at this stage)

The agro-literate

The industrial

Agro-literate societies

A complex system of fairly stable statuses.

Power and culture did not come together: the

ruling class uses culture to differentiate itself

from the bottom strata. There is no incentive

for rulers to impose cultural homogeneity, for

the status is ascriptive. Culture underlines

structure and reinforces existing loyalties.

Since there is no cultural homogenization

there can be no nations.

Industrial society

Industrial society is characterized by high levels of

social mobility, in which social roles are no longer

ascribed. This society must be more or less

egalitarian because it is mobile. The nature of

work is quite different: manual labor involves

maintaining a sophisticated machine. Culture in

that system depends on context-free

communication and a high level of

standardization. And it needs to be sustained by

the polity.

The alliance of state and culture

Modern educational infrastructure is large and

exceedingly expensive. The only agency

capable of sustaining and supervising such a

vast system is the central state. The only way

a given culture can protect itself against

another one is to acquire its own state. This is

what brings state and culture together. That is

what nationalism is about.

That is why nationalism is, essentially, the

general imposition of a high culture on

society, where previously low cultures had

taken up the lives of the majority. It is the

establishment of an anonymous, impersonal

society, with mutually substitutable atomized

individuals, held together by a shared culture.

Five stages to nation-states

These stages represent the transition from a

non-nationalist order to a nationalist one:

Baseline

Nationalist irredentism

National irredentism triumphant and

self-defeating

Nacht und Nebel (night and fog)

Post-industrial stage

Baseline

Ethnicity is not yet important and the

idea of a link between it and political

legitimacy is entirely absent.

Nationalist irredentism

The political boundaries and structures of this

stage are inherited from the previous era, but

ethnicity – or nationalism - as a political

principle begins to operate. The old borders

and structures are under pressure from

nationalist agitation.

The triumphant national irredentism

Multiethnic empires collapse and the

dynastic-religious principle of political

legitimization is replaced by nationalism. New

states emerge as a result of nationalist

agitation.

Nacht und Nebel (night and fog)

All moral standards are suspended and the

principle of nationalism, which demands

homogeneous national units, is implemented

with a new ruthlessness. Mass murder and

forcible transplantation of populations replace

more benign methods such as assimilation.

Post-industrial stage

This is the post-1945 period. High level of

satiation of the nationalist principle,

accompanied by general affluence and

cultural convergence, leads to a diminution,

though not the disappearance, of the

virulence of nationalism.

Four zones in Europe

These stages played themselves out in

different ways in various time zones.

There are four such zones in Europe.

The Atlantic sea-coast

From pre-modern times there were strong

dynastic states. These political units

corresponded roughly to homogeneous

cultural-linguistic areas. Thus, when the age of

nationalism came, relatively little redrawing of

frontiers was required. There was no

‘ethnographic nationalism’ in this zone, that

is, ‘idealization of peasant cultures in the

interest of forging a new national culture’.

Territory of the Holy Roman

Empire

The area of domination of the German and

Italian cultures. Those who tried to create a

German literature in the late eighteenth

century were merely consolidating an existing

culture, not creating a new one. All that was

required here was to endow the existing high

culture with its political roof.

Complicated time zone to the east

This was the only area where all five stages played

themselves out to the full. There were neither

well-defined high cultures, nor states to cover and

protect them. The area was characterized by old

non-national empires and a multiplicity of folk

cultures. Thus, culture and polity required by

nationalism to take place had to be created. This

made the task of the nationalists more difficult

and its execution more brutal.

The most troubled time-zone

This zone shared the trajectory of the previous

one until 1918. But then, the destinies of the

two zones diverged. While the Habsburg and

Ottoman empires disintegrated, the Russian

Empire was dramatically revived under a new

management and in the name of a new

ideology. The new regime was able to repress

nationalism at the cost of destroying civil

society.

Unclear future

When the Soviet system was dismantled,

nationalism emerged with all its vigor and with a

few of its rivals. Having been artificially frozen at

the end of the second stage, the fourth time zone

can resume its normal course at stage three

(irredentist nationalism), four (massacres or

population transfers) or five (diminution of ethnic

conflict). Which of these options will prevail – that

is the crucial question facing the territories of the

former Soviet Union.

Summary: Main features of nationalism

Shared, formal educational system

Cultural homogenization and ‘social entropy’

Central monitoring of polity, with extensive

bureaucratic control

Linguistic standardization
National identification as abstract community

Cultural similarity as a basis for political legitimacy

Anonymity, single-stranded social relationships

Social/cultural transformations

(Constructivism)

Benedict Anderson, Irish-American

political scientist and sociologist

(1936-2015)

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the

Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983)

Nationalism emerged towards the end of the

eighteenth century as a result of the

spontaneous distillation of a complex

‘crossing’ of discrete historical forces and once

created, they became models which could be

emulated in a great variety of social terrains,

by a correspondingly wide variety of

ideologies.

Definition

The nation is an imagined, limited and

sovereign political community.

Imagined community

It is imagined because ‘the members of even

the smallest nation will never know most of

their fellow-members, meet them, or even

hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives

the image of their communion.’

Limited community

It is imagined as limited because each nation

has finite boundaries beyond which lie other

nations.

Sovereign community

It is imagined as sovereign because it is born

in the age of Enlightenment and revolution,

when the legitimacy of divinely ordained,

hierarchical dynastic realm was rapidly

waning.

Imagined as a community

It is imagined as a community because,

regardless of the actual inequality and

exploitation that may prevail in each, the

nation is always conceived as a deep,

horizontal comradeship.

Anderson criticizes Gellner of assimilating

‘invention’ to ‘fabrication’ and ‘falsity’, rather

than to ‘imagining’ and ‘creation’. Such a view

implies that there are ‘real’ communities which

can be advantageously compared to nations. In

fact, however, all communities larger than small

villages of face-to-face contact are imagined.

Communities should not be distinguished by

their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in

which they are imagined.

Cultural systems that preceded

nationalism

The gradual decline of the religious

community and the dynastic realm, which

began in the XVII century, provided the space

necessary for the rise of nations.

Religiously imagined communities

The decline of the ‘great religiously imagined

communities’ was, first, the effect of the

explorations of the non-European world which

widened the general cultural and geographical

horizon, and showed the Europeans that

alternative forms of human life were also

possible. The second reason was the gradual

decay of Latin.

The magic of nationalism

Religion provided salvation from the arbitrariness of

fatality by turning it into continuity (life after death),

by establishing a link between the dead and the yet

unborn. The ebbing of religious worldviews has not led

to a corresponding decline in human suffering. What

then was required was a secular transformation of

fatality into continuity, contingency into meaning.

Nothing was better suited to this end than the idea of

nation which always looms out of an immemorial past,

and more importantly, glides into a limitless future: It

is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny.

Christian conception of time

Christian conception of time is based on the

idea of simultaneity. According to it events are

situated simultaneously in the present, past

and future. The occurrences of the past and

the future are linked neither temporally nor

causally, but by Divine Providence which alone

can devise such a plan of history.

Homogeneous empty time

The conception of

simultaneity-along-time was replaced by

the idea of homogeneous empty time

measured by clock and calendar. The

new conception of time made it possible

to imagine the nation as a sociological

organism moving steadily down or up in

history.

The newspaper

A number of independent stories are

connected by the date at the top of the

newspaper. The second connection is

provided by the simultaneous mass

consumption of newspapers. The

community in anonymity, which is ‘the

hallmark of modern nations’, is born.

Print-capitalism

The cultural origins of the modern nation

could be located historically at the junction of

three developments: a change in the

conceptions of time, the decline of religious

communities and of dynastic realms. But the

picture is not complete yet. The missing

ingredient is provided by commercial book

publishing on a wide scale, i.e.,

“print-capitalism”.

The logic of publishing business

The inherent logic of capitalism forced the

publishers, once the elite Latin market was

saturated in 150 years, to produce cheap editions

in the vernacular languages. This process was

precipitated by three factors. The first was a

change in the character of Latin. Thanks to the

Humanists, the literary works of pre-Christian

antiquity were discovered and spread to the

market. This generated a new interest in the

sophisticated writing style of the ancients which

further removed ecclesiastical Latin from

everyday life.

The impact of the Reformation

Second was the impact of the Reformation,

which owed much of its success to

print-capitalism. The coalition between

Protestantism and print-capitalism quickly

created large reading publics and mobilized

them for political/religious purposes.

Vernaculars as administrative languages

Third was the adoption of some vernaculars as

administrative languages. It has to be noted

that the rise of administrative vernaculars

predated both print and the Reformation,

hence must be regarded as an independent

factor. These three factors led to the

dethronement of Latin and created large

reading publics in the vernaculars.

The bases of national consciousnesses

The print-languages laid the bases for national

consciousnesses in three ways. First, they

created unified fields of exchange and

communication below Latin and above the

spoken vernaculars. Second, print-capitalism

gave a new fixity to language which helped to

build the image of antiquity so central to the

idea of the nation. And third, print-capitalism

created languages-of-power of a kind different

from the earlier administrative vernaculars.

The rise of ‘official nationalism’

These developments created increasing political

problems for many dynasties in the course of the

nineteenth century because the legitimacy of

most of them had nothing to do with

‘nationalness’. The dynastic families and

aristocracy were threatened by possible exclusion

from the nascent ‘imagined communities’. This

led to the so-called official nationalisms aimed to

stretching the short skin of the nation over the

body of the empire. Official nationalisms emerged

after, and in reaction to, the popular national

movements in Europe after 1820s.

Topic 4

What are the three basic forms of world politics?

How did Roman imperial policy differ in eastern and western provinces of the

empire?

What were the factors of the Roman imperial decline?

How were the Germanic peoples ruled?

What were the main activities and practices of feudal rule?

What were the three forms of service vassals provided the king with?

What factors caused the transformation of feudalism into rule by centralized,

medieval states?

Why were centralizing efforts of medieval monarchs supported by the bourgeoisie

and the lower nobility?

What were the factors for the emergence of depersonalized mode of governance?

What were the main consequences of the Peace of Westphalia?

What were the outcomes of the struggle between the crown and the estates in

England and in France?

Three basic forms of world politics

World imperial system

Feudal system

Anarchic system of states

The sources of republican imperialism

The state's revenues were drawn largely

from agriculture.

Public works were funded from tribute

paid by conquered peoples.

The Roman economy was also

dependent on a continuous supply of

slaves, whose primary source was

conquered territory.

Expansion from a republic into an empire was

also implicit in the idea of virtus, which

militarized Rome. War provided an important

social and cultural arena where Roman

citizens distinguished themselves in the eyes

of their fellow citizens. At the time of its

greatest strength, the Roman army numbered

about 30 legions of 6,000 men each.

The republican state created conditions

that transformed it from a republic into

an empire dominated by emperors and

military strongmen, who came to rule

more and more autocratically.

Imperial government

The city of Rome and the Italian peninsula were

governed by the Senate.

The eastern and western provinces outside of the

peninsula were governed by the emperor.

In the eastern provinces the emperors established

its domination indirectly by spreading Roman

ideology and manipulating local rulers. When the

Romans believed their hegemony was threatened

prefects intervened militarily.

Roman policy in the West required more

direct forms of rule. Although the

eastern provinces had provided Rome

with much of its culture and wealth, the

western provinces remained a perpetual

battleground, where generals of the

Roman army gained power and prestige.

The cost of imperial expansion

Expansion impoverished the small

independent farmers, who had been the

backbone of the Roman economy, and

enhanced the wealth and power of the

patrician aristocracy. As these farmers were

drafted into the army to increase its size so

that the empire could be expanded and

maintained, their farms were taken over by

the patrician aristocracy.

The position and role of the army changed. Its

ranks were filled increasingly by dispossessed

farmers and by "barbarians" who agitated for

Roman citizenship. When the traditional

aristocracy resisted demands for land and

citizenship, legionaries became increasingly

loyal to their local commanders, who

promised such rewards.

The causes of imperial decline-I

By the middle of the second century A.D. the

empire ceased to expand. Lacking the tribute

from newly conquered peoples, the empire

could no longer pay for its army, bureaucracy,

and public works. Gradually, the extraction of

resources necessary to maintain the army and

the civil service as well as build public works

became confiscatory and the Roman state

became despotic.

The causes of imperial decline-II

With the concentration of land ownership in

the latifundia system of the empire, reliance

on slave labor expanded. This system of

agricultural production depended on the

state's continuing to expand militarily because

military campaigns on the frontiers of the

empire were the most significant source of

new slave labor.

The causes of imperial decline-III

The empire's economic problems, especially

the inflation of prices caused by falling

productivity (a result of the dwindling supply

of slave labor), were compounded by

urbanization. The latter, which accelerated as

power shifted from Rome itself to the

provinces, became increasingly difficult to pay

for with the financial resources provided by a

largely agrarian economy.

The causes of imperial decline-IV

Rome's policy of recruiting barbarians into the

army to maintain its strength eventually led to

the de-Romanization of the army. The civilian

reign gradually gave way to military

dictatorship. The latter exacerbated the

empire's economic problems because more of

its wealth was given to soldiers to buy their

loyalty.

In an attempt to stave off further

disintegration, the empire was divided,

for administrative purposes, into eastern

and western portions by the emperor

Diocletian. He ruled the eastern portion

and appointed a co-emperor in the west.

When Diocletian abdicated in 305 A.D., he was

followed on the imperial throne by

Constantine, who established a new capital

city on the Bosporus in 330. Eventually, the

division into Eastern and Western Empires

became permanent and Byzantium, the

capital of the Eastern Empire, was renamed

Constantinople in honor of its founder.

Feudalism

Germanic kings in the area of the collapsed

Western Roman Empire held secular authority

under the sacred authority of the Church—in

contrast to the Eastern Roman Empire where

the emperor, seen as representing Christ on

earth, held both secular and sacred authority.

Kingship as a form of rule originated in

Germanic tribal custom.

Early Medieval Europe

In the West, kings wielded secular power,

which they acquired through heredity, and the

Church wielded sacred power, which it had

acquired, in its view, from God. Here a

political imaginary emerged that defined

politics in terms of the clan-based,

personalized connections of Germanic tribal

rule and in terms of the depersonalized and

hierarchical politics of the Roman Catholic

Church.

When a kingdom reached a certain size it was

subdivided into counties, and a representative

of the king, called a count, was selected to

govern each one. Kings sought to

counterbalance the power of strong counts by

establishing rival authorities in each county.

The Church was taken under the protection of

kings and the counts were forbidden to enter

Church property or its territory.

By the tenth century, feudalism had

spread more or less to all former

territories of the Roman Empire. Each

feudal "state" was a pyramidal structure

of individuals bound together by oaths of

loyalty. In some cases, kings were

considered vassals of the pope, who was

considered God's vassal on earth.

Five practices of feudalism

Vast stone castles

Military campaigns against rival lords

The reputations of certain lords as defenders of the

Faith, which ensured their support from the Church

Dynastic alliances, primarily through strategic

marriages, which expanded the wealth and

politico-military power of rulers

The king or counts were providing justice throughout

the governed territory

The granting of land from which the

vassal could derive personal income

became the most common way of

rewarding service, because land was the

primary source of wealth. Vassals

provided the king with three forms of

service.

The first was military, i.e. appearing fully

armed when summoned by the king.

The second was counsel, or advice on

important decisions.

The third was financial, which involved

payments of money to the king to help him

meet unusual expenses such as ransoming

himself from his enemies, or when his eldest

daughter was married.

Fiefs were subdivided into manors, the

basis of the feudal agricultural economy.

The lord of each manor was a free man

who owed feudal obligations to the lord

of the fief. The peasants who lived on the

manor tilled a plot of land owned by the

lord of the manor.

A king received advice from court and a great

council composed of the three main estates of

the realm—clergy, nobility, and bourgeoisie.

Because the king needed the consent of the

estates to obtain access to their financial

resources, especially to raise taxes to fight

wars, by the late feudal period a struggle

intensified between the crown and the council

of estates.

The rise of the centralized states

By the end of the late Middle Ages a number

of important elements of territorial states

would be in place: large standing armies,

hierarchies of government functionaries loyal

to territorially based rulers, and new ideas

about human beings. This transformation of

feudalism into rule by the centralized,

medieval states was the result of several

factors.

From 1000 to about 1400, a band of heavily

armored knights mounted on specially bred

and trained warhorses became the principal

military formation of the medieval age.

Because of the expense of knights’ military

equipment, especially the chain mail coat, the

number of men-at-arms in medieval armies

was low.

In medieval warfare the advantage was with

the defense. But between 1300 and 1600,

three technological innovations were

introduced onto the European battlefield;

these revolutionized medieval warfare and

shifted the advantage to the offense.

Three technological innovations

Longbow (10 arrows/minute at 300 yards)

Pike, which could dislodge armored knights

from their horses.

The introduction of gunpowder from China

during the fourteenth century. In the result of

that the dominance of the heavily armored

knight and the stone castle ended with the

development of the gun and the cannon.

As a result of the emergence of infantry,

artillery, and the trace italienne, armies

increased in size and complexity. As armies

became bigger, they were divided into

infantry, artillery, and light cavalry units.

Training and discipline were introduced.

Logistics systems developed. Troops began to

wear uniforms, and received standardized

arms.
The military revolution

Armies no longer just fought battles; they

increasingly came to represent the state they

fought for—which render mercenaries an

anachronism—and to symbolize its power,

thereby helping create its right to govern. The

military revolution transformed the indirect,

fragmented, decentralized rule of feudalism

into the direct, concentrated, centralized rule

of an early form of the territorial state.

As armies and fortifications became

larger and more expensive to maintain,

kings increasingly found themselves in

debt. Gradually, the financial institutions

set up by kings to collect revenues from

their private lands became public

institutions that collected taxes

conceded by the estates.

Absolutism

Medieval monarchs were helped in their

centralizing efforts by the support they

received for such efforts by the bourgeoisie

and the lower nobility. The bourgeoisie did

not much resist because it benefited from

the territory-wide legal systems, which

came to link capitalism and state power in a

single political formation.

The lower nobility was also in favor of

the centralizing efforts of medieval kings.

From their ranks medieval monarchs

began to build a corps of professional

administrators. Thus, the vassal-lord

relationship ceased to be the glue that

held the feudal politico-military system

together.

Society came increasingly to be

envisioned as peopled by a multitude of

private individuals, not corporate groups.

Larger, territorial political units emerged,

and politico-military power and authority

became concentrated in the hands of the

king and his court.

As power and authority became being

lodged in the institutions and offices of

monarchical power rather than in the

person of the king, they were increasingly

depersonalized. This involved, first, the

development of impersonal systems of law

and taxation and, second, the emergence

of a new language of politics and rule.

Medieval monarchs on the continent

began to write legal codes, which

were published in the vernacular,

not Latin. Such codes fostered the

development of official state

languages such as French, Russian,

English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The second element of the emerging

depersonalized mode of governance was the

development of a new language of political

power and authority revolving around the

idea of state sovereignty. The state became

identified less with the decisions of private

persons who governed, and more as

institutions under the supervision of the king.

The Reformation

An important catalyst for the transformation

of medieval monarchies was the Reformation

and the religious wars it spawned. Peace

treaties after the Thirty Years' War known

collectively as the Peace of Westphalia,

sanctioned the division of Europe into states

according to the religious principles of their

rulers.
The Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Westphalia created a

problem: how to imagine and represent

a combined religious, moral, and political

authority in a secular entity confined

within territorial borders?

The solution to this crisis of the

representation of territorial authority was to

imagine the state as a symbolic body politic.

This idea was base on a Christian tradition to

locate authority in the human world in the

body of Christ, who, had a dual nature.

Second, legal discourses during the Middle

Ages had similarly endowed the body of the

king with a special significance and dual

nature.

Topic 5

What was an essential precondition for the emergence of the nation-state in its

modern meaning?

What are the four greatest modern state crystallizations?

What was the essence of the first proto-national phase?

What was the essence of the second proto-national phase?

What were the main characteristics of the third proto-national phase?

What were the three different types of nations that came into being?

What was the essence of the fourth, industrial capitalist, phase of nation-building?

Why did the nations themselves often tend to be more aggressive than their former
aristocratic masters?

How different was the West European model of national development from the

Central European one?

What were the peculiarities of the national movements in East Central Europe?

Why did the nation-state find it difficult to tolerate national or cultural minorities

within its boundaries?

Why was the integralist variety of the idea of the nation-state strengthened by the

policies of imperialism?

Why did the middle classes become the bearers of aggressive nationalism?

What were the three essential ways in which the nation had advanced during the

industrial capitalist phase?

Why did the First World War mark a new peak of nationalist feeling?

What were the features of the final, modernist, phase in the development of the

European nation-state?

The nation-state

The nation state as a new form of political unit emerged in Europe in a long series of revolutions,

wars, and internal conflicts of various sorts. It is, of course, true that some of the West European

states, such as France, Spain and – to some degree at least – Great Britain, had been established

along national, or rather ethnic and cultural lines since the sixteenth century. But it may be doubted

whether these states could be considered nation states in the modern sense of the word at all before

the end of the ancien régime. The rise of constitutional government through which the people, or

rather the educated bourgeois elites, were given at least some say in the running of political affairs,

is an essential precondition of the nation-state in its modern meaning. The four greatest modern

state crystallizations – capitalism, militarism, representation, and the national issue – were

institutionalized together.

This period saw the emergence of classes and nations. Nations are not the opposite of classes, for

they rose up together, both (to varying degrees) the product of modernizing churches, commercial

capitalism, militarism, and the rise of the modern state. Ideological power had dominated the first
proto-national phase, as churches diffused broader social identities through sponsorship of mass

discursive literacy. In the second proto-national phase, varying combinations of commercial

capitalism and modernizing states continued to diffuse more universal proto-national (and class)

identities, enveloping particularistic economic roles, localities, and regions. In the decisive third,

militarist phase, the increasing costs of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century geopolitics

propelled broader identities toward the national state, just as they politicized class and regional

grievances. By around 1700, European states were spending about 5 per cent of their GNP on the

military in peacetime, and 10 per cent in wartime. By the 1760s the range was 15 to 25 per cent, by

1810 it was 25 to 35 per cent, and by that date around 5 per cent of the population was being

conscripted into the armed forces.

Intensifying geopolitical rivalries gave national identities the first aggressive sentiments toward

each other. This militarist phase helped to mobilize populations on the grounds that they were

fighting for ̳the people‘ and ̳the nation‘. Reformers focused on transforming the central state to

make it more representative and responsive, leading to a more integrated and ̳national‘ state.

Linguistic nationalism reinforced public as well as private communication channels. Emerging

classes and nations now influenced, and were themselves influenced by, state institutions.

Galvanized by militarism, their moral passions intensified by ideologies, classes and nations

demanded more representative government and aimed toward democracy.

Thus nations essentially originated as movements for democracy. However, nations were at this

point confronted by a choice: to democratize a central state or to democratize local-regional seats

of government. Politically, the choices depended on whether state institutions were already fairly

centralized. Nations emerged as all sources of social power intertwined. Relations among these

sources changed over the period. Before and at the beginning of this period geopolitics had

generated a military revolution causing repeated state fiscal crises that politicized and

―naturalized‖ class relations. The last and deepest crisis came at the end of the eighteenth century.

The rise of citizenship is conventionally narrated as the rise of modern classes to political power.

They were caged into national organization by two principal zookeepers: tax gatherers and

recruiting officers.
During the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, there was the fourth,

industrial phase of capitalism, when its class struggles and their impact on the state reinforced

emerging nations. States for the first time undertook major civilian functions, sponsoring

communications systems; canals, roads, post offices, railways, telegraph systems, and, most

significantly, schools. States were largely responding to the needs of industrialism, as articulated

primarily by capitalists, but also by militaries, and by state elites. State infrastructures enhanced

the density of social interaction, but bounded by the state‘s territorial reach. The nation was not a

total community. Few states started the period as nationally homogeneous: Most contained regions

with distinct religious and linguistic communities, and many regions had their own political

institutions, or memories of them.

The military and industrial capitalist phases of state expansion intensified both representative and

national issues. Mass education generated conflict with minority churches and regional linguistic

communities. Under growing representative pressures from emerging classes, no central regime

now could simply impose its language on provinces with their own native vernaculars. The

intertwined military and economic revolutions had generated the modern state, which proved to

have emergent power properties. On the representative issue states crystallized at various positions

between more mobilized authoritarian monarchy and an embryo party democracy. On the national

issue they crystallized between centralized nation-states and confederalism. Thus, according to

context, the industrial capitalist phase of the nation encouraged three different types of nations:

state reinforcing (for example, England), state creating (Germany), and state subverting (across

most Austrian lands).

During the first half of the nineteenth century there was almost universal agreement among the

educated middle classes in Europe that the nation state was the only viable political organization

worthy of an age of liberalism and enlightened politics. This was a powerful idea created by the

intelligentsia; it soon became an essential element of the liberal ideology of the rising middle

classes, but it also was taken up by parts of the older aristocracy which at times managed to put

themselves at the helm of this new movement. Liberalism as a political movement was successful

only where and when the aristocratic elites took up the ideas of liberalism at least in part, as in

Great Britain, in Italy and in Hungary.

Things did not quite work out according to the assumptions of classic liberalism. Rather the

nations themselves often tended to be more bellicose and aggressive than their former aristocratic

masters. The ideal of the nation state gradually lost its emancipatory dimensions and instead took

on more and more antiliberal features. It would be correct to speak of a deformation of national

politics during the age of high imperialism (roughly to be dated from 1880 to 1918).

The nation state was concerned in the first place about the exertion of political power, while the

free unfolding of one‘s own national culture came to be considered as secondary. Great Britain and

France are the most important cases of a fairly continuous development toward the modern nation

state which could build upon long-established historical foundations. In these cases the middle and

lower classes were gradually given a higher degree of say in political affairs, which seems to be

one of the necessary ingredients of modern nationalism, without major internal conflicts or

upheavals. Nationality was defined here in terms of the subjective political option by the

individuals concerned rather than by ̳objective‘ factors like language, ethnicity and/or religion.

Compared with the West European model in Central Europe the national development was from

the start far more dominated by comparatively small bourgeois elites closely associated with

traditional territorial states. Here, from the start, the idea of the nation state was closely associated

with the traditional militarist power state of the late eighteenth century. In Germany nationalism

was considered by the intelligentsia and in particular the rising bourgeois classes as a means to

break the fetters of an outdated system of petty principalities dominated by two rival major

̳German‘ powers, namely Austria and Prussia, and to create the preconditions for economic

growth and social reform. The German nation state eventually came about through a ̳revolution

from above‘, skillfully engineered by Bismarck, and the rising middle classes were largely

onlookers. Accordingly it was not a liberalized Prussia which would be gradually dissolved in the

new German nation state, but the traditional power state which set the tune. Accordingly Prussia‘s

hegemony over the rest of Germany imbued the German nation state from the start with a

distinctively authoritarian character.

In Italy the national idea was in the first place a weapon to establish and justify the hegemony of a

still fairly small bourgeois elite over the broad masses who cared little for politics. For a long time
the Italian catholics, the huge majority of the population, were told by the Catholic Church not to

engage directly in the affairs of the ̳secular‘ nation state which therefore remained the domain of

the upper middle classes throughout the nineteenth century. Hence the nation state was for a long

time to come a very partisan affair which did not enjoy the support of the people at large.

The creation of the Italian and German nation states in the center of Europe set a pattern for what

was to come. Both embraced above all the idea of state power, to be exercised against recalcitrant

citizens. The idea of the nation state progressively lost those elements which in the first half of the

nineteenth century had made it an emancipatory ideology, directed against the arbitrary rule of

princes and small aristocratic elites, and an intellectual weapon in the campaign for constitutional

government. Instead it came to be associated with the power—status of the established national

culture, and the imposition of its values on ethnic or cultural minorities both within and beyond the

body politic was now considered essential.

Even more authoritarian in nature were the smaller national movements which gradually

developed in East Central Europe and in particular on the Balkans. Here the nationalist movements

were from the start involved in bitter struggles not only against their former hegemonic powers,

notably Russia, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and, at least initially, also Prussia, but also

against rival claims of neighboring peoples.

This explains the particularly violent character of the nationalist movements in these regions, as

well as the inclination to stick to ̳objective‘ criteria of nationality, rather than let people decide for

themselves to which nationality they wished to belong. Ethnicity, religious affiliation, economic

interests and the resistance to traditional rulers together provided the dynamite of national conflicts

which eventually led to violent convulsions and major wars. In East Central Europe the idea of the

nation state was little more than a concept manipulated by dominant ethnic or cultural groups,

often of a very small size, in order to strengthen their positions within the polity; for that matter

nationalism tended to be in these cases all the more belligerent and repressive towards

counterclaims by other national groups.

However even in relatively advanced and civilized nations like Great Britain or Imperial Germany

the national ideal had become a new secular religion of the educated elite; here also nationalism
asserted itself, above all, in contrast to rival nationalist movements. This new nationalist creed

which was preaching the extension of control by the nation state as far as possible, was in many

ways closely associated with a belief in the manifest destiny of one‘s own nation, supposedly

ordained by God to play a dominant role in history. Religious zeal and nationalist thought in fact

became closely correlated. The symbiosis between religious and nationalist attitudes, supported by

a cluster of material interests of diverse sorts, became an important factor which worked against

the liberal origins of the national idea and was a breeding ground for intolerance and even

repression against those groups who stood outside the mainstream of national politics.

The nation state found it difficult to tolerate national or cultural minorities within its boundaries.

National homogeneity was seen as the new ideal, and increasingly the nation state was willing to

bring this about by force. National cultures were always hegemonic cultures, formed by

establishing themselves as high cultures and gradually drawing rival local cultures into their orbits.

But what happened during the latter part of the nineteenth century was in many ways different. For

now the hegemony of the dominant national group was strengthened by the power of the nation

state, and frequently it was ruthlessly used to expand the sphere of influence of the dominant

culture by administrative measures, or, if needs be, by force. Now national homogeneity was seen

to be an essential requirement of the nation state. Accordingly the dominant groups showed little

patience with ethnic, cultural or minority groups within the boundaries of the nation state.

Assimilation of minority groups into the dominant national culture now became the battle cry,

partly for cultural reasons, but primarily for reasons of state, as the ethnic and cultural

homogeneity of the nation was increasingly considered an essential precondition of the external

strength of the nation state in its perennial struggle against rival states. Minority groups with

relatively autonomous status were suspected of being open to the influences from outside forces.

In a way this was the reverse side of the process of the gradual democratization of the modern

nation state. The more the people at large, and not just small traditional elites, plus, to a degree, the

intelligentsia, began to actively participate in the political process, the more urgent appeared the

need to impose a sense of national unity upon all citizens alike. The traditional aristocratic elites in

pre-modern Europe had found no particular difficulties in governing diverse ethnic or national

groups; with the entry into the political arena of ever larger sections of the middle classes this
seemed to be no longer possible. Now even in multi-national states like Tsarist Russia or the

Habsburg Monarchy, and eventually, with the rise of the Young Turks to power, also in the

Ottoman Empire, the old principle of respecting the cultural autonomy of various ethnic or cultural

groups increasingly gave way to a policy of assimilation vis-à-vis ethnic or religious minorities.

The tendency to impose one‘s own national culture upon others by a variety of administrative and

economic measures, backed up by the power of the state, did not only apply to national minorities

which could be considered genuine rivals in the process of nation-building. The ideas of the

dominant national culture were imposed upon all minorities alike, ethnic, religious and social.

Loyalty to the nation state was not considered enough; instead a greater degree of homogeneity in

cultural, linguistic and political terms was enforced by growing collective pressure against all

those groups which seemed to stand outside the main stream of the national tradition. The social

democratic movements were the prime targets of these policies. The religious minorities which

allegedly did not accept the primacy of the national idea were subjected to similar pressures.

This new, integralist variety of the idea of the nation state was considerably strengthened by the

policies of high imperialism. The arrival in the 1880s of the imperialist ideology as a new mass

phenomenon provided powerful support for the idea that nations should be homogeneous. The

imperialist ideology also gave an additional impetus to the idea of the racial superiority of one‘s

own nation. Imperialism was only the last stage of a long process of European expansion; but by

the 1880s nationalism and imperialism became intertwined in a way which had never been before.

Colonial empire was described as a necessary corollary of the formation of the nation state, or its

logical consequence. The creation of an overseas empire seemed to be the only way of preserving

the status of one‘s own national culture in the coming age of world-power politics.

Initially colonial expansion had been justified by many of the propagandists of the imperialist idea

as a means – indeed as the only means – of revitalizing the national culture. Through imperialist

expansion national cultural life would receive a new impulse; its growth would in itself strengthen

the vitality of national culture; literature, the arts and the sciences would all benefit from an

extension of the territory controlled by one‘s own nation state, and by extending their beneficial

effects to the peoples of die non-European world. Imperialist policies were looked at from this
vantage point as a source of strength to the nation, not only in terms of power and economic

resources, but also in moral terms. For this was a new great task, the fulfillment of which would

require the best skills and the best minds of the white nations.

However, the most effective argument in favor of imperialist policies was certainly that put by the

establishment; that through the expansion of empire the political and cultural traditions of one‘s

own nation would be extended to other regions and peoples overseas, thereby widening the sphere

of political, economic and cultural influence of the nation state considerably. In most European

countries the imperialists believed that this was a mission which they had to fulfill in order to live

up to the great and sacred traditions of their ancestors.

Politics, economics and culture all played a part in the imperialist ideology which reached its

highest peak in the last two decades before the First World War. But the most effective

justification of empire was the appeal to national feeling. Certainly this was to some degree an

ideology created by intellectuals for the consumption of intellectuals, but its impact on the

bourgeois classes and beyond, and not least the classes dirigentes was lasting and far-reaching.

Under the impact of this new ideology not only the great European powers and, since the 1890s,

also the United States turned imperialist, but also – and this is most significant – powers of a

secondary or even tertiary rank, like Italy and the Balkan states even though some of them had in

fact not yet completed the process of national emancipation in full.

It is usually argued that imperialist expansion was motivated above all by economic

considerations, real or fictitious. But it is most revealing that since the 1880s the pursuit of empire,

either directly or indirectly, came to be considered an essential element of national politics quite

independently of considerations of economic advantage. The idea of the nation state had become

merged with the notion that one must extend the sway of one‘s own national culture as far as

possible, regardless of the costs and the consequences. From these observations may be concluded

that during the period of high imperialism the notion of the nation state was subjected to a process

of gradual, if substantial, change. Increasingly it lost its original emancipatory character, and

became very closely associated with the exercise of power against rival political units, justified in

terms of the extension of the sphere of dominance of the respective national culture at any cost.
The nation state was, in the first place, an institution designed to exercise power and not merely the

embodiment of a national culture. Its foremost task had become, in fact, to get the dominant

culture accepted throughout the body politic, and to expand its sphere of control as far as possible,

while criteria like ethnicity and cultural identity became secondary. Ethnic minorities were forced,

directly or indirectly, to submit to the dominant national culture, even though this might mean

sacrificing their own cultural identity, their own language and/or their religious affiliations.

Loyalty to the nation state was increasingly seen to require full identification with the dominant

culture, not just obedience to the authorities within the confines of the law. Last but not least,

racialist attitudes gradually became more influential, not least under the influence of the colonialist

propaganda which emphasized the allegedly racial origins of the cultural backwardness of the

indigenous populations.

These illiberal distortions of the nation state closely correlated with the politics of high

imperialism. The scramble for territories overseas led to an enormous intensification of great

power rivalries which not only changed the nature of imperial rule on the p
̳ eriphery‘, but also of

the European political system. The rearmament race between the great powers had an important

impact upon domestic politics. Governments often succumbed to the temptation to shelve internal

reform because of alleged threats from abroad. A new variety of an aggressive militarism emerged,

not so much supported by the traditional military establishment, but by important sections of the

bourgeois classes who demanded a stronger army and particularly a stronger navy in order to see

imperialist policies backed up by force.

It was not in the first place the governments, but the public which was increasingly inclined toward

an aggressive nationalism. The military build-up in the majority of European powers substantially

contributed to what may be described as a partial militarization of the national idea. Increasingly

the symbolic representation of the nation state in the public was becoming a military affair, and

less so one of royalties, governments or parliaments. The display of military splendor and military

power came to be an essential, if not the dominant feature in public ceremonies, and heads of state

tended to surround themselves more than ever before with the insignia of military might.

It should be added that the national ideologies of the day had an important social function in a

period of accelerated social change, largely propelled by the rapid advance of the industrial
system. While traditional social lineages and loyalties had lost much of their binding force, the

national idea proved to be a substitute for them in as much as it provided a new sort of cohesion

among the various social and political groupings. At the same time it was an emancipatory

ideology of the rising middle and lower middle classes which challenged the privileged position of

the traditional ruling elites and demanded a larger share of power for themselves. The success or

failure of imperialist policies was largely believed to decide the economic future of the European

nations, and for this reason it was the middle classes and the intelligentsia which were most

strongly in favor of ̳forward policies‘ of one kind or another.

The increasing violence of state-reinforcing nationalism has centered on interstate wars. In 1900,

about 40 percent of state budgets still went toward preparation for war. But now these states were

becoming more representative and more national. The middle class, peasants, and even sometimes

workers began to identify their interests and their sense of honor with those of their state against

other nation-states, endorsing aggressive nationalism. The full political citizens, primarily the

middle class, were the bearers of aggressive nationalism in alliance with old regimes.

As industrialism expanded states, two sets of tentacles extended an embrace over national society:

the civilian and military administrations. Hundreds of thousands of administrators now depended

for their livelihood on the state; millions of young men were disciplined by a military cadre into

the peculiar morale, coercive yet emotionally attached, that is the hallmark of the modern mass

army. These two bodies of men, and their families provided most of the core of extreme

nationalism.

In the industrial capitalist phase the nation had advanced in three essential ways. First, much of the

population, largely unconsciously, had become naturalized, making the nation an extensive

community of interaction and emotional attachment. Thus the ―national‖ organization increased at

the large expense of the local and the regional and at the lesser expense of transnational

organization. Second, many citizens – at this point drawn from middle and upper classes and from

dominant religious and linguistic communities – were drawn further toward nationalist

organization, regarding national interests and honor as essentially conflicting with those of other

nations. Third, the actually nationalist core was disproportionately drawn from state expansion
itself, in civilian and military cadre employment. National populations were now more confined

within cages whose relations with other national cages were defined not by the people as a whole

but first by private state and military elites, second by the nationalists.

The transition from a liberal to an exclusivist notion of the nation state was promoted by

imperialism. This was activated by a backlash on the part of the periphery against the metropolis.

Not only was the maintenance of empire made far more costly by the increasing rivalry between

the imperialist powers, as it necessitated not only a steady intensification of control at the

periphery, which in turn fostered resistance, but also financial outlays for policing the empire as

well as for the maintenance of ever larger armies and navies in order to maintain one‘s position

against the other powers within the European arena. The imperialist rivalries also had a

considerable impact upon the internal order within the ̳metropolitan‘ states; not only was the ̳new

nationalism‘ which emerged in the wake of imperialist policies essentially anti-liberal and prone to

foster racialism, militarism and authoritarian rule, it also in many respects undermined the social

position of the traditional ruling elites, while as yet there was no new elite of far-sighted,

responsible statesmen and political and military leaders around to replace them.

The coming about of the First World War must be seen in this light. For by 1914 the traditional

ruling elites, subjected to considerable pressures by a public which harbored far-reaching

imperialist expectations, proved partly unwilling, partly unable to prevent the outbreak of the war.

The First World War marked the end of an era of European predominance over the globe and the

beginning of the end of empire, even though decolonization began in earnest only after the Second

World War. Besides, the racialist attitudes and the militarist mentality which had become

widespread among the officers and men of various colonial armies during their services overseas

exercised a significant influence upon the public in the ̳metropolitan‘ states in Europe already

before 1914; it contributed to the gradually growing readiness to consider war a good tiling in as

much as it was supposed to have a revitalizing impact upon national culture, allegedly suffering

from a bourgeois materialist lifestyle and from economic saturation, at the expense of traditional

national values.

The First World War marked a new peak of nationalist feeling. Right from the beginning of the
war the peoples of the aggressor states demonstrated a degree of national cohesion which few of

the members of the governing elites had expected. The nationalist enthusiasm which emerged in

August 1914 in the majority of the belligerent countries was considered at the time an altogether

new phenomenon. Political and social divisions were apparently swept away by a sense of loyalty

to the nation state; even the Socialist parties joined in the common endeavor to defend the

fatherland against what was seen everywhere as unjust aggression by rival nation states. The

national idea made it possible to mobilize the physical and moral energies of the masses for the

conduct of the war to a much higher degree than ever before. It soon became apparent that this war

was unlikely to be ended by a negotiated peace; the question was: victory or defeat?

On all sides the national idea was invoked to justify large-scale war aims designed to once and for

all ensure the dominance of one‘s own group in Europe. The Western powers were determined to

dismember the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the Ottoman Empire, and to reconstruct East

Central Europe according to the principle of national self-determination. The Central Powers

planned to give national autonomy to the Poles and the Baltic nations under their hegemonic

control.

The final, modernist, phase commenced with the post-war peace settlements after 1918 and was

reflected in the redrawing of maps and boundaries. The concept of popular sovereignty was firmly

embedded in the new democratic national states as well as by authoritarian rightist regimes who

used nationalism as an aggressive way of extending state power. In other words, nationalism is to

be understood as a means of state-building either of democratic or authoritarian regimes in Europe.

The state became important in the modern world for providing key services: it alone was capable

of waging massive and routinized war; it supplied communication infrastructures for both

militarism and capitalism; it was the main site of political democracy; it guaranteed social

citizenship rights; it participated in macroeconomic planning which it largely invented.

By 1919 the moment seemed to have arrived for a genuine revival of the original emancipatory

program associated with the national idea. But this chance, if it was one, was lost almost from the

start. The idea of the democratic nation state which had been envisaged by Woodrow Wilson to be

implanted throughout Europe, and in particular in East Central Europe, from the start was

challenged by the older varieties of an aggressive nationalism. There was little preparedness to
relinquish the traditional habit of suppressing the national minorities within the boundaries of the

new states which came into being after 1918. Many of the new states embarked upon imperialist

policies vis-à-vis their neighbors, wherever possible, even in the case of the reconstituted Polish

nation state, which had for so long been the cherished ideal of the European liberal movement.

Even worse, the new nationalism gradually took on racialist features, and in some ways at least

paved the way for the rise of the fascist movements.

One would have thought that the eventual collapse of the fascist movements after the Second World

War should have led to disenchantment with the idea of the nation as the prime organizational

principle of modern politics. In pragmatic terms this was not the case. Under the aegis of the two

rival superpowers, the United States and the USSR, Europe was reconstituted according to the

principle of nationality. But the idea of the nation state as the prime principle of political

organization nonetheless suffered a moral setback. Certainly in Europe, notably in Western Europe,

the nation state has given way in part to transnational forms of political organization.

But the fervent expectations of many g̳ ood Europeans‘ that the nation state would be supplanted

by a European state were soon disavowed. In fact in the last decades there has occurred a universal

revival of the nation state principle world-wide. Perhaps most spectacular is the fact that the new

nations overseas, however much they disowned the colonial heritage otherwise, wholeheartedly

took up the traditional Western idea of the nation state, even though in very many cases it was little

suited to the local conditions, determined by a great variety of ethnic and cultural traditions within

largely artificial boundaries.

The Western notion of the nation state was considered by the leading Westernized elites who took

over from their former colonial masters as a suitable concept in order to turn the newly

independent countries into new political entities under their leadership. Often the national idea,

together with the idea of anti-imperialism, was little more than an ideology to justify the rule of

small elites over a totally diversified body politic, although it actually bore little, if any

resemblance to what nation and nation state had meant during the time when they were first

developed as basic principles of a modern political order. Besides, in many cases the ruling elites

in the non-European peoples have adopted the worst aspects of the notion of the nation state, as it
developed during the age of high imperialism. They believe that it is all important to have strong

military forces, to display military grandeur, and they have had frequent recourse to violence in

order to enforce political loyalty and cultural homogeneity.

After the end of the cold war and the period during which world politics were dominated by a sharp

antagonism between the two rival world systems almost everywhere national emancipatory

movements have re-emerged. This allows the conclusion that the age of the nation state is far from

over; rather we observe a revival of the nation state, notwithstanding the increasing

interdependence of the world which would suggest that transnational forms of political and

economic organization are increasing in importance. The nation state is still with us as an essential

principle of political organization, but it is to be hoped that it will not resemble too closely its

forerunners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.