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Theories of Nationalism nation \'n_-shen\ n [L nation-, natio birth, race, nation, fr. natus, pp. of nasci to be born; akin to L gignere to begetómore at KIN] (14c) 1 a (1); NATIONALITY (2): a politically organized nationality (3): a non-Jewish nationality b : a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government c : a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usu. Characterized by relatively large size and independent status 2 archaic : GROUP, AGGREGRATION 3 : a tribe or federation of tribes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- T he methods of partitioning land have undergone tremendous change since the thirteenth century. No historian would dispute the existence of distinct political entities. During medieval and renaissance times, royal dynasties and religious organizations formed the foundations of political and geographical divisions. As the modern era approached, people began to question the Divine Right of Kings and the dynastic apportioning of their land. Although many historians have theorized about the rise of nationalism, only three or four have dominated 20th century political writings. I have selected five nationalist theorists for further exploration: Ernest Gellner, Miroslav Hroch, Eric Hobsbawm, Ernest Renan and Benedict Anderson. These five theorists have contributed a tremendous amount to the study of the rise of nationalism. Gellner, Hroch and Hobsbawm propose general models for the rise of nations, while Renan and Anderson define nationality and examine the spirit behind it. Ernest Gellner Ernest Gellner is perhaps the most influential theorist in the study of nationalism. In his essay, "The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretations: The Myths of Nation and Class," he creates a model for micro-units evolving into "nations." According to Gellner, there are five stages in the transition: 1. Baseline: "A world exists where ethnicity is still not yet self-evidently present, and where the idea of any link between it and political legitimacy is almost entirely absent." 2. Nationalist Irredentism: "A world which has inherited and retained most of its political boundaries and structures from the previous stage, but within which ethnicity as a political principleóin other words, nationalismóis beginning to operateÖThe old borders and polities are under pressure from nationalist agitation." 3. Emergence of Nationalist States: "National Irredentism triumphant and self-defeating. Plural empires collapse, and with them the entire dynastic-religious style of political legitimation, and it is replaced by nationalism as the main effective principle. A set of smaller states emerge, purporting to fulfill the national destiny of the ethnic group with which they are identified. This condition is self-defeating, in so far as these new units are just as minority-haunted as the larger ones which had preceded them. The new units are haunted by all the weaknesses of their precursors, plus some additional ones of their own. " 4. Nacht and Nebel. "This is a term employed by the Nazis for some of their operations in the course of the Second World War. Under cover of wartime secrecy, or in the heat of conflict and passion, or during the period of retaliatory indignation, moral standards are suspended, and the principle of nationalism, demanding compact homogenous ethnic groups within given political-territorial units, is implemented with a new ruthlessness. It is no longer done by the older and benign method of assimilation, but by mass murder or forcible transplantation of populations." 5. Cultural Convergence: "High level of satiation of the nationalist requirement, plus generalized affluence, plus cultural convergence, leads to a diminution, though not the disappearance, of the virulence of nationalist revindication." *Note- to preserve the integrity of Gellner's model, I have quoted him exactly from his essay "The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretations" in Mapping the Nations. Gellner grounds each stage historically. It is interesting to note that he considers the world on eve of the French Revolution in 1789 the "baseline" society, although it bears very little resemblance to either one of the two societies Gellner describes as "baseline." Prior to the French Revolution, dynastic monarchies invoked the Divine Right of Kings to apportion land and to govern the people. Miroslav Hroch Hroch classifies a nation as "a large social group integrated not by one but by a combination of several kinds of objective relationships (economic, political, linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical, historical) and their subjective reflection in collective consciousness." In his essay "From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe," Hroch identifies three keys to creating a "nation:" "a 'memory' of a common past, treated as a 'destiny' of the group; a density of linguistic or cultural ties enabling a higher degree of social communication within the group or beyond it; a conception of the equality of all members of the group organized as a civil society." The three keys to creating a national identity generally occur in Phase A of Hroch's three phases: Phase A: Activists strive to lay the foundation for a national identity. They research the cultural, linguistic, social and sometimes historical attributes of a non-dominant group in order to raise awareness of the common traitsóbut they do this "without pressing specifically national demands to remedy deficits." Phase B: "A new range of activists emerged, who sought to win over as many of their ethnic group as possible to the project of creating a future nation." Phase C: The majority of the population forms a mass movement. "In this phase, a full social movement comes into being and movement branches into conservative-clerical, liberal and democratic wings, each with its own program." All quotations of Miroslav Hroch come from his essay "From National Movement to the Fully-Formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe." Eric Hobsbawm Hobsbawm incorporates Hroch's three phases into his model for the development of nations and adds to them: National Consciousness: Hobsbawm's first stage describes how "national consciousness" develops "unevenly among the social groupings and regions of a countryÖthe popular massesóworkers, servants, peasantsóare the last to be affected by it" (Nations and Nationalism 12). Phase A: Hobsbawm adopts Hroch's terminology, describing Phase A as the emergence of cultural, literary and folkloric identity for a particular social group or region (12). Within this phase, Hobsbawm cites three criteria for making claims of nationality: 1."Its historic association with a current state or one with a fairly lengthy and recent past" (37). 2."The existence of a long-established cultural elite, possessing a written national literary and administrative vernacular" (37). 3."A proven capacity for conquest" (38). Phase B/ Popular Proto-Nationalism: A body emerges, which consists of pioneers and militants of "the national idea." They begin to campaign for this idea of "nationality" (12). He gives four main criteria for the development of "popular proto-nationalism": 1. Language 2. Ethnicity 3. Religion 4. "The consciousness of belonging or having belonged to a lasting political entityóthe most decisive criterion of proto-nationalism" (73). Phase C: "Nationalist programmes acquire mass support, or at least some of the the mass support that nationalists always claim they represent" (12). Hobsbawm demonstrates the historical relevancy of this stage, dividing the nationalist movement into three periods: 1. "The transformation of nationalism" (1870-1918): In this period, the world witnessed the completion of German and Italian unifications during the "Mazzinian phase" (1870-1880), as well as the collapse of multinational empires (the Hapsburg empire, the Ottoman empire, Russia) from 1880-1918 (101-130) 2. "The apogee of nationalism" (1918-1950): he describes this period as the triumph of the nineteenth century "principle of nationality" (131). 3. Nationalism in the late twentieth century: the rise of "internationalism" (163-183). Ernest Renan Renan argues that "a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things constitute this soul or spiritual principle . . . One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is a present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form" (Nation and Narration 19). Sacrifices form the foundation of "nations"ó"a nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future" (Nation 19). Renan disregards conventional proposals that race, religion and language generate nationalism. However, he does cite geography as a significant factor. Historically, as Anderson also emphasized, most nations began as dynasties. According to Renan, dynastic territories progress to nations in one of three ways: dynastic unions, general popular consciousness and direct will of provinces (Nation and Narration 12). Renan proposes the fascinating theory of forgetting: "Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for [the principle of] nationality . . . Historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence, which took place at the origin of all political formations, even those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial . . . The modern nation is therefore a historical result brought about by a series of convergent facts" (Nation and Narration 18). Two sources that Renan cites as instrumental in creating unity are general consciousness and raison d 'etre. He argues that "a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things constitute this soul or spiritual principle . . . One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is a present-day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form" (Nation 19). Sacrifices form the foundation of "nations"--"a nation is therefore a large-scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling of the sacrifices that one has made in the past and of those that one is prepared to make in the future" (Nation 19). Renan disregards conventional proposals that race, religion, dynastic unity, and language generate nationalism. With regards to race, Renan writes, "the truth is that there is no pure race . . . the noblest countries, England, France, and Italy, are those where the blood is the most mixed" (Nation 14). However, he does cite geography as a significant factor. According to Renan, dynastic territories progress to nations in one of two ways: general popular consciousness and direct will of provinces (Nation 12). Benedict Anderson In his book, Imagined Communities, Anderson proposed that nationalism filled the void left by the decline of religious and dynastic territorial control. He writes, "Through the general principle of verticality, dynastic marriages brought together diverse populations under new apices" (20). The power of dynastic unions emerged most clearly through the Hapsburg family. Monarchs invoked the Divine Right of Kings to manipulate their subjects (as opposed to their citizens), and the Hapsburg family embodies that potent combination of religion and a monarchy. In 1452, the Archduke of Austria (a Hapsburg) was elected Holy Roman Emperor, marking the beginning of a dynastic superpower that would endure until the First World War. However, as the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment approached, such blind faith in the monarchy diminished, and people began to consider the concept of becoming a "nation." The First World War saw the demise of many dynastic realmsó"by 1922, Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Romanovs and Ottomans were goneÖFrom this time on, the legitimate international norm was the nation-state, so that in the League [of Nations] even the surviving imperial powers came dressed in national costume rather than imperial uniform" (Imagined Communities 113). *For more information on Anderson, please visit http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Anderson.html Timeline of the Major Events in the History of Nations 1450- Invention of the printing press (Gutenberg) 1452- The Archduke of Austria selected as Holy Roman Emperor, marking the beginning of the Hapsburg Dynasty (1452-1918) 1492- The Unification of Spain 1618-1648- The Thirty Years' War 1648- Peace of Westphalia 1702-1713- War of Spanish Succession 1713-1714- Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt 1776-1783- The War for American Independence 1789- French Revolution 1792-1815- Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars 1815- Congress of Vienna 1848- Revolutions of 1848 1859- The Italian War 1864- The Danish War 1866- The Austro-Prussian War 1870- The Franco-Prussian War 1871- Italian and German Unification completed 1914-1918- World War I 1917- Russian Revolution 1919- Treaty of Versailles 1933-1945- Germany's Third Reich: Hitler comes to power 1938- Munich crisis; Germany annexes Austria 1939-1945- Second World War 1945- United Nations established (51 members); Cold War begins 1947- India and Pakistan independent 1948- Burma independent, Israel established 1949- People's Republic of China established; Dutch leave Indonesia 1950s- Japan regains sovereignty; various African independence movements 1960s- More African independence movements; Vietnam War begins *All dates taken from Palmer and Colton's A History of the Modern World Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: New Left Books, 1991. Gellner, Ernest. "The Coming of Nationalism and Its Interpretation: The Myths of Nation and Class." Mapping the Nation. New York: New Left Books, 1996. Hobsbawm, Eric J. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Hroch, Miroslav. "From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation: The Nation-Building Process in Europe." Mapping the Nation. New York: New Left Books, 1996. Palmer, R.R. and Joel Colton. A History of the Modern World. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995. Renan, Ernest. "What is a Nation?" Nation and Narration, edited by Homi Bhabha. New York: Routledge Books, 1990. Selected Bibliography Bauer, Otto. "The Nation." Mapping the Nation, edited by Gopal Balakrishnan. New York: New Left Books, 1996. Gellner, Ernest. Encounters with Nationalism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, 1994. Hobsbawm, Eric. "Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today." Mapping the Nation. New York: New Left Books, 1996. Notions of Nationalism. A collection of essays, edited by Sukumar Periwal. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Smith, Anthony D. "Nationalism and the Historians." Mapping the Nation. New York: New Left Books, 1996.