Nation and NATIONALISM

Despite the importance of nationalism, there is a lack of consensus about what it is and why it
has maintained such a firm hold over so much of the world’s population. Any examination of
nationalism must be preceded by some kind of definition of what constitutes a nation. This
question is complicated by the manner in which people often use the terms nation, state, and
country interchangeably. The last two terms refer to political entities. The first is a term used to
describe a group of people who may or may not live in the same state or country. The difference
is conveyed in the German by the words Staatsangehörigheit (citizenship) and Nationalität
(nationality). A person can be of German Nationalität without being a German citizen.

Definitions of nation or nationality rely either upon objective or subjective criteria, or on some
combination of the two. Most objective definitions of nationality rely on the commonality of
some particular trait among members of a group. Shared language, religion, ethnicity (common
descent), and culture have all been used as criteria for defining nations. A casual examination of
the history of national differentiation indicates that these factors often reinforce each other in the
determination of a nationality. Certain nationalities, such as the Croats, are now defined as
distinct from Serbs almost exclusively on the basis of religious differences.

Likewise, Urdu-speaking Pakistanis are distinguished from Hindi peaking Indians largely
because of religion. In other cases, however, a shared religion seems a less accurate method for
drawing the boundaries of a nationality. The German nation, for example, is divided mainly
among Protestants and Catholics. Conversely, the inhabitants of France and Italy, though both
overwhelmingly Catholic, belong to two different nationalities.

One of the most frequently used of all the objective marks of nationality is a common language.
Indeed, a shared language has been a very powerful factor in national unification. Yet this
definition, too, is fraught with difficulties. For one thing, what we today call national languages
are, to one degree or another, artificial constructs. Other national languages have been created for
imperial purposes. The various languages of central Asia (e.g. Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Khazak) did
not exist until they were conjured out of local dialects by Soviet linguists during the 1920s. The
languages were then used as evidence to support Soviet claims of the existence of several nations
in Central Asia, which was then divided into separate Soviet Socialist Republics as part of a
divide-and-rule strategy.

Even in cases where a popular vernacular becomes a national language, this transformation
typically happens after the foundation of a nation state. For example, French became a national
language only after the creation of a French nation-state. In 1789, only about half of the
population in the Kingdom of France spoke French. To the nationalist Revolutionaries, making
French the common language of the nation was of the utmost importance. The same could be
said of German, Italian, Hungarian, and other modern European languages. A common
vernacular language of administration, state education, and military command was an important
tool in the extension of the modern state’s bureaucratic control. Thus, national languages are
largely the creation of modern nation-states, not the other way around.

It seems, therefore, that pre-existing common linguistic or religious attributes may not be
absolute indicators of a nation. Ethnicity or common descents are other possible criteria for
national boundary drawing. These were especially popular during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries and blended with that era’s fascination with racial pseudo-science. To the
modern student, however, ethnicity seems a much less compelling criterion. The people of the
various Mediterranean nations, for example, are plainly the product of centuries of inter-ethnic
marriages. Likewise, the American, Mexican, or British nations are made up of people of many
different ethnic backgrounds.

Hence, while objective traits can be useful as very rough criteria for defining the existence of a
nation, they are not enough. Indeed, a nation may be a very subjective entity. Many students of
nationalism are eventually led to the conclusion that people belong to a certain nation if they feel
that they belong to it.

As an ideology, nationalism is the claim that people belonging to a particular group called a
nation should inhabit a particular area and control a state of their own. Such a definition points to
nationalism as a method of drawing boundaries among people. Whether nationalism is viewed as
an ideology or a state of mind, one can still ask, why did so many people abandon earlier,
universalist ideologies (e.g. Christianity) and non-national self-identifications (e.g. occupation or
social status)?

Some trace the roots of nationalism to the Reformation. The Reformation itself was important in
the development of proto-nationalist feeling, especially when considered in light of the
revolution in printing and the subsequent surge in publications in various vernaculars (as
opposed to the universalist Latin), which weakened the church hierarchy as interpreters of the
Bible and laid the groundwork for the establishment of the nation. While the print revolution
may have sown the seeds of national self-consciousness, most people continued to identify
themselves by their religious affiliation rather than their nationality.

Most students of nationalism draw a causal link between the changes underway in Europe during
the end of the eighteenth century and the development of nationalism during that same period.
As people left their villages and farms for the growing cities, they also left behind many of their
previous attachments and were receptive to new ones. The great social and economic changes
underway during the late eighteenth century were accompanied by change in political thought, as
liberalism began to compete effectively against the ideas of the divine right of kings and
absolutism. The American War of Independence, for example, was both a manifestation of the
idea of national self-determination and an assertion of radical liberal principles. The American
nationality was defined by the belief in a set of liberal propositions which, the Americans
believed, applied not only to themselves but also to all humankind. Similarly, English
nationalism as it developed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries maintained its roots in
the idea of individual liberty.

The growth of the centralised state as well as the fascination with vernacular languages fostered
the growth of nationalism. The modern state needed to promote a common language among its
subjects. Public (i.e.state-run) schools emerged at precisely the time when nationalism was
growing. The state used its schools to teach a common national (i.e. enforced) language, partly to
reinforce a sense of loyalty to the state, but also to facilitate state functions, such as tax collection
and military conscription. The extraction of revenues from the population and the formation of
vast military organisations for territorial aggrandizement drove the evolution of the modern state
system in Europe. The subsequent emergence of nationalist ideology is closely connected to this
process. As direct rule expanded throughout Europe, the welfare, culture, and daily routines of
ordinary Europeans came to depend on which state they happened to reside in. Internally, states
undertook to impose national languages, national educational systems, national military service,
and much more. Externally, they began to control movement across frontiers, to use tariffs and
customs as instruments of economic policy, and to treat foreigners as distinctive kinds of people
deserving limited rights and close surveillance. As a result, two mutually reinforcing forms of
nationalism emerged: one refers to the mobilisation of populations that do not have their own
state around a claim to political independence; the other to the mobilisation of the population of
an existing state around a strong identification with that state. Besides these aspects of the
growth of themodern state, it is no accident that the participation of the masses in politics
coincided with the age of nationalism. As politics became more democratic and monarchs lost
the last vestiges of their previous legitimacy, rulers needed something new upon which to base
their power.

Both liberalism and nationalism shared a healthy loathing of dynastic absolutism and of the
censorship and oppression that it brought, linking their fates closely together through the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, however,
succeeded in destroying many aspects of individualism and liberalism that had existed in
nationalism. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the history of nationalism on the continent
of Europe would be dominated by increasingly anti-liberal, or anti-individualistic, themes. The
emerging nations of Europe became acquainted with nationalism not as a vehicle of individual
liberty but as an adoration of collective power.

In much of Western Europe the geographic boundaries of the nation-state had preceded the
building of the nation itself. For example, there was a Kingdom of France before there was a
French nation. In Central and Eastern Europe the situation was completely reversed. In these
areas nations were born before nation-states. Much of east-central Europe was controlled by four
great multinational empires, namely the German, Russian, Habsburg, and Ottoman. Many of the
people who inhabited these empires had no historical state with which they might identify. For
the peoples living in Central and Eastern Europe, the liberal aspirations of nationalism were
submerged while the goal of building a nation-state became paramount. The development of
nationalism in Asia, and later in Africa, was greatly influenced by the growing role of European
powers in those areas. It is, in fact, in Asia and Africa where nationalism developed last and
where many of its worst manifestations are today in evidence.

The role of nationalism in international relations is ambiguous. On the one hand, nationalism
provides a justification for dividing humanity on the basis of territory. On the other hand, since
many territorial boundaries were determined prior to the rise of nationalism (particularly in Asia,
the Middle East, and Africa), the principle of national self-determination is deeply subversive of
contemporary international law based on state sovereignty. There are no signs that this paradox
is about to come to an end in the foreseeable future.

Source:

Written by Martin Griffiths and Terry O’Callaghan.