Scholars are generally wary in
pinpointing the arrival of nationalism any earlier than the Napoleonic Wars (see
in particular Anderson, Gellner & Hobsbaum) but the dispute when it arises
goes beyond a mere matter of semantics. Having pride in your people's distinct
culture and language is evident throughout antiquity and many empires have been
built around the singular culture of a distinct people. In the modern era, and
before the French revolution, we don't tend to refer to empire's expansion as
"nationalist" or "nation-building" as the promotion of a particular ethnic or
linguistic/cultural group wasn't the avowed imperial prerogative. In addition to
which, empires tended to subsume other cultural groups quite effortlessly and
passed laws which bound all subjects in fealty to the crown irrespective of
their cultural identity. Only when it became possible for people to envisage
themselves existing outside the traditional structures of monarchy; ie the birth
of republicanism and so on, did this gave an added impetus to the formulation of
political principles which are nowadays readily associated with
'nationalism'.
On the other hand, while we may instinctively feel we know what a nation is when we confront one, (either historically or presently all around us), there is nevertheless no satisfactory definition of what a nation comprises. This shouldn’t be too surprising either as the elements traditionally associated with ‘nationhood’ or ‘nationality’, (language, attachment to a ‘homeland’, notions of ethnicity, literature, music, folklore and so on) belong largely in the cultural domain and, even among members of the same ‘nation’, feelings towards theses cultural artefacts are malleable and constantly subject to revision. So, conceptions of what comprises the nation, or what the national sentiment is, are themselves subject to ongoing change; nationalist self-imagining being relatively fluid and constantly undergoing challenges of adaptation. As to the semantic difficulties, these are legion and this is the crux of the difficulty as scholars are not working upon any universally accepted notion as to what constitutes the parameters of a nation or, indeed when we can pinpoint the birth of nationalist sentiment.
Thus, when Seton-Watson says ‘nationalism is a phenomenon less than two hundred years old’ and John Plamenatz agrees that ‘there was little or none of it in the world until the end of the 18th century’ we may take it that they see something distinctive about the ideals of the French Revolution insofar as the 'rights of man’ threatened absolutist type monarchies everywhere and generally supplanted them with calls for a liberal democratic nation-state. This viewpoint is understandable, as when the absolutist monarchies of Europe lost their legitimacy and the structural cracks began to appear, particularly within the ramshackle Austro-Hungarian empire, the question then became under what political formation should their former subjects begin to align themselves. The pressures seething so long under the surface and to which Metternich applied all of his resources attempting to suppress, gave rise to a creative revolutionary undercurrent particularly among the splintered Italian duchies and statelets which in itself helped animate the movements for unification within the German states. I suppose these twin developments; the slow disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the gradual unification of the German speaking areas caused such dislocations that by the time they exhausted themselves the predominant ideology was that of ‘nationalist’ self-determination, with or without monarchy.
So, these theorists are looking at it from the point of view of when ‘nationalism’ became a motor force sufficiently strong to dominate events, but there are others, admittedly in the minority, such as Eugene Kamanka who sees “the concept of the nation and nation state as the ideal, or normal form of political organisation emerging slowly - in Europe - out of the ruins of the Roman Empire”. Clearly, Kamanka is not working with anything remotely like the same definition of ‘nation’ as Watson or Plamenatz. Nor is Obolensky whose “Nationalism in eastern Europe during the Middle Ages” sees it’s presence as a ‘basic political fact’ by the end of the fourteenth century! D. G. Boyce in “Nationalism in Ireland” admits freely ‘there has never been agreement about what constitutes a nation’ and begins his own examination of trace elements of nationalism in pre-Norman Ireland ( early 12th century). Benedict Anderson, on the other hand, points to the ‘founding fathers’ of academic scholarship on nationalism (Hans Kohn and Carleton Hayes) and says that their dating for the end of the 18th century “has not been seriously disputed except by nationalist ideologues”.
However, as can be seen from the examples above, this is not entirely true. Having established, in his own mind at least, that there is an academic consensus on when nationalism emerged Anderson says of the debate that it is one of those paradoxes which have always irritated and perplexed theorists; ie. the objective modernity of nations in the historian’s eyes vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes of nationalists. His own definition of a nation is of “an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. My own take on this is that these ‘imaginary’ elements occupy such an important place in a people’s sentiments that they readily become concretised through legal and constitutional means (although they are not by and large indispensable to the functioning of a sovereign nation-state). Parliamentary democracies are broadly similar the world over; an independent judiciary, houses of assembly, a presidential office with varying executive powers, yet where is the innate necessity of inscribing in law those elements of the cultural domain which marks off that country as a distinct nation? There is no over-riding need in any practical sense yet it is often done. There is no insuperable element of a country’s national identity that I can think of, that were it to be erased, the country itself would cease to function. This is even more the case when we move into the domain of international law where internal differences based upon national cultural peculiarities are superseded by the application of universally binding laws which generally pay scant attention to these matters.
On the other hand, while we may instinctively feel we know what a nation is when we confront one, (either historically or presently all around us), there is nevertheless no satisfactory definition of what a nation comprises. This shouldn’t be too surprising either as the elements traditionally associated with ‘nationhood’ or ‘nationality’, (language, attachment to a ‘homeland’, notions of ethnicity, literature, music, folklore and so on) belong largely in the cultural domain and, even among members of the same ‘nation’, feelings towards theses cultural artefacts are malleable and constantly subject to revision. So, conceptions of what comprises the nation, or what the national sentiment is, are themselves subject to ongoing change; nationalist self-imagining being relatively fluid and constantly undergoing challenges of adaptation. As to the semantic difficulties, these are legion and this is the crux of the difficulty as scholars are not working upon any universally accepted notion as to what constitutes the parameters of a nation or, indeed when we can pinpoint the birth of nationalist sentiment.
Thus, when Seton-Watson says ‘nationalism is a phenomenon less than two hundred years old’ and John Plamenatz agrees that ‘there was little or none of it in the world until the end of the 18th century’ we may take it that they see something distinctive about the ideals of the French Revolution insofar as the 'rights of man’ threatened absolutist type monarchies everywhere and generally supplanted them with calls for a liberal democratic nation-state. This viewpoint is understandable, as when the absolutist monarchies of Europe lost their legitimacy and the structural cracks began to appear, particularly within the ramshackle Austro-Hungarian empire, the question then became under what political formation should their former subjects begin to align themselves. The pressures seething so long under the surface and to which Metternich applied all of his resources attempting to suppress, gave rise to a creative revolutionary undercurrent particularly among the splintered Italian duchies and statelets which in itself helped animate the movements for unification within the German states. I suppose these twin developments; the slow disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the gradual unification of the German speaking areas caused such dislocations that by the time they exhausted themselves the predominant ideology was that of ‘nationalist’ self-determination, with or without monarchy.
So, these theorists are looking at it from the point of view of when ‘nationalism’ became a motor force sufficiently strong to dominate events, but there are others, admittedly in the minority, such as Eugene Kamanka who sees “the concept of the nation and nation state as the ideal, or normal form of political organisation emerging slowly - in Europe - out of the ruins of the Roman Empire”. Clearly, Kamanka is not working with anything remotely like the same definition of ‘nation’ as Watson or Plamenatz. Nor is Obolensky whose “Nationalism in eastern Europe during the Middle Ages” sees it’s presence as a ‘basic political fact’ by the end of the fourteenth century! D. G. Boyce in “Nationalism in Ireland” admits freely ‘there has never been agreement about what constitutes a nation’ and begins his own examination of trace elements of nationalism in pre-Norman Ireland ( early 12th century). Benedict Anderson, on the other hand, points to the ‘founding fathers’ of academic scholarship on nationalism (Hans Kohn and Carleton Hayes) and says that their dating for the end of the 18th century “has not been seriously disputed except by nationalist ideologues”.
However, as can be seen from the examples above, this is not entirely true. Having established, in his own mind at least, that there is an academic consensus on when nationalism emerged Anderson says of the debate that it is one of those paradoxes which have always irritated and perplexed theorists; ie. the objective modernity of nations in the historian’s eyes vs. their subjective antiquity in the eyes of nationalists. His own definition of a nation is of “an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign”. My own take on this is that these ‘imaginary’ elements occupy such an important place in a people’s sentiments that they readily become concretised through legal and constitutional means (although they are not by and large indispensable to the functioning of a sovereign nation-state). Parliamentary democracies are broadly similar the world over; an independent judiciary, houses of assembly, a presidential office with varying executive powers, yet where is the innate necessity of inscribing in law those elements of the cultural domain which marks off that country as a distinct nation? There is no over-riding need in any practical sense yet it is often done. There is no insuperable element of a country’s national identity that I can think of, that were it to be erased, the country itself would cease to function. This is even more the case when we move into the domain of international law where internal differences based upon national cultural peculiarities are superseded by the application of universally binding laws which generally pay scant attention to these matters.
Yet, within a
country a sense of ‘nation-ness’ constantly breathes it’s life through the
statute books - as when Morales in Bolivia reallocates gas receipts to
indigenous populations, the Irish legislature rules the teaching of the Gaelic
language compulsory or when the nationalist BJP party in India issues secondary
schoolbooks which refute the Aryan migration hypothesis. In the formula
“nation-state” the “state” is a definable concrete entity located in statutes
whereas the “nation” is a type of collective self-idealization whose values
strive to influence the formulation of these statutes. Insofar as it is
successful in doing so the ‘nation’ as a collective ideal achieves a concrete
and tangible form. The ‘nation-ness’ of a sovereign state often seems chimerical
if we are to rely solely on the imaginary reworking of an historical tradition
by nationalists (and its products often fail a high degree of scrutiny) but this
imaginary reworking is an act of reclamation tacitly approved and actively
encouraged by ‘the people’ (a goodly proportion of them at any rate).
The difficulty I have with historians such as Anderson (ie. those that pinpoint a late 18th century provenance for nationalism) is that the focus is shifted exclusively upon the superstructure; monarchy dissolves giving way to the nation state and the analysis of top-down ideology prevails. What is less often given serious study is the lines of continuity embodied in those cultural traits which have survived intact amongst a people irrespective of what political arrangement they may be living under. When Eleanor Fitzgerald, the Countess of Desmond wished to show her gratitude to Elizabeth I for releasing her husband Gerald during the 16th century Desmond rebellion she gave her a finely wrought harp brooch; a cultural emblem which both recognised to be distinctively “Irish”. We still have harps on our coins to this day (not because of this incident) but this is only one of thousands of ‘memes’ or cultural traits which have survived through the millenia; a subjective antiquity easily glimpsed if the 'nation' is simply viewed as a synonym for 'people'. It isn't of course, the word is more loaded than that - but when you are talking about a nation you are mainly talking about it's people and their distinctive 'folkways' elaborated and 'thickened' through time. Understanding the history, or indeed the representation of nationalism, implies a sensitivity to questions of semantics as too often among commentators seldom any clarification is provided as to what signifying element within the word 'nation' is actually being referenced.
Certainly we can look to the altered nature of social bonds in the mid 19th century as perhaps uniquely during this time there was a general 'quickening' of the senses;, new worlds were dawning and the changes being wrought seemed to gather a momentum of their own. Also there was a tension that now existed between universalist doctrines such as socialism and liberalism and the often exclusivist character of nationalism. Everyone, in theory, should belong to a particular nation; at least it seems inconceivable that someone should find themselves not belonging to any distinct nation. Take the case of Kossuth who was a born Croat yet is now regarded as the father of Hungarian nationalism. I suspect in the early days there were many instances of such malleable identities. Or of a bilingual Austrian of mixed parentage who spoke both Slovak and German - to whose motherland does he align himself when push comes to shove?
It seems that once monarchy's crisis of legitimacy reached it's height crown princes everywhere tapped into burgeoning nationalist sentiment and increasingly began depicting the interests of their reign as co-extensive with that of the nation. With respect to Prussia we can talk here of a period of 'official' or 'sanctioned' nationalism which took off after Bismarck's early successes. This is opposed to that virulent yet 'unofficial' variant of nationalism which found expression during the short-lived Frankfurt Assembly after the 1848 'disturbances'. In that instance the nationalist calls for a 'Greater' Germany were short-circuited by Prussian intransigence and the lack of a coherent platform amongst the revolutionists - liberals, democrats and nationalists all disagreeing over what demands should be prioritised. Marx, we recall, momentarily dropped his communist credentials to fight the good fight almost from a liberal-democratic perspective; interesting too when you consider the split amongst the German socialists over the 'nationalist' hankering to pursue a war trajectory in 1914.
The rise of nationalism after the Napoleonic Wars has to be tied in generally with these other struggles that so dominated the landscape; extension of the franchise, an increasing separation of church and state, rising middle classes, independent bourgeoise and the spread of print media which continually made reference to the people's common frustrated needs. I suppose in the general ferment of ideas which followed on from the French Revolution, those parochial social bonds which were hitherto delimited by being enmeshed within feudalistic structures (whose apex after all was the title granting absolutist monarch) there emerged instead a flattening, or type of horizontal expansion of perspectives. As communications networks improved, previously self-contained feudalist 'societies' merged in many respects, in large part due to the proliferation of new newspaper publications; people could make reference to a commonality of aims amongst fellow 'citizens', as opposed to the previous demarcation of 'subjects'. Iliteracy wouldn't have been the burden you may expect as the common practice was for the family or neighbours to gather round and often have the paper read from cover to cover by perhap's the solitary literate figure in the village - the Irish nationalist and fenian O' Donovan Rossa in his memoirs remarks as such on his childhood in Cork during the 1820's.
But did all these processes bring into being 'nations' where none had previously existed?
The now universal calls for liberal and democratic reforms heightened political awareness but oftentimes what became apparent is that the greatest stumbling block to those reforms being met came from monopolising factions belonging to a dominant ethnic or cultural group. This was a common complaint throughout the Habsburg territories where Italians chafed at the lack of opportunities for advancement within the northern duchies and Czechs and Slovaks were being sidelined in favour of German-speaking Austrians. We can look at countries like Britain and say that though they never had a native dynasty - the Plantagenets were Norman, the Tudors Welsh, the Stuarts Scottish, the Hanoverians German etc - this didn't prevent the crown's effective fusion with the 'nation' (with the possible exception of the Norman dynasty and the later opposition to the Stuarts).
Charles V, though Holy Roman Emperor and viewed by many as a foreigner still had to make that dreaded visit to Spain and make appointments conducive to Castilian sensitivities - always it seems within the administrative jostlings of 'Empire' there were in-built hierarchies based upon ethnic and cultural differences. 'Nations' and 'nationality' weren't magically conjured into existence in the early 19th century, I feel; the ambitious were acutely aware of the advantages and limitations that belonging to a particular cultural group entailed. Think of the murmurings in court when James Stuart of Scotland began appointing kinsmen to high office or offered them cheap land in Ulster over and above English grandees. It was probably more the case that the populist expression of 'nationality' was contained by the fiercely hierarchical societies which monarchy promoted and once the egalitarian genie was let out the broader based distribution of rights began to manifest what had always been present.
In Italy during1848 there were many divided interests - the southern princes were reluctant to send troops north to aid the struggle against Radetzky lest they be defenceless against their own populations. There was also much 'municipal patriotism', expressed by a lingering loyalty to the city-state which the monarchs in turn exploited to stave off the inevitable. A unified state after all meant the dissolution of their own power; reminiscent of the position faced by the German princes. The position of Austria-Hungary is a very interesting one and something of a wonder that the Habsburgs managed to hold it together for as long as they did. We can go back to the 17th century or earlier and still find the same difficulties confronting its Emperors - how to contain the varied demands of its different subject peoples; being Czech, Slovaks or, Polish were concrete identities to which the Habsburg advisors continually refer, not necessarily principally as 'subjects' - they didn't call the Slovenes 'Carnolians' for instance. There is a recognition that each distinctive group brings it's own peculiar set of administrative headaches.
The difficulty I have with historians such as Anderson (ie. those that pinpoint a late 18th century provenance for nationalism) is that the focus is shifted exclusively upon the superstructure; monarchy dissolves giving way to the nation state and the analysis of top-down ideology prevails. What is less often given serious study is the lines of continuity embodied in those cultural traits which have survived intact amongst a people irrespective of what political arrangement they may be living under. When Eleanor Fitzgerald, the Countess of Desmond wished to show her gratitude to Elizabeth I for releasing her husband Gerald during the 16th century Desmond rebellion she gave her a finely wrought harp brooch; a cultural emblem which both recognised to be distinctively “Irish”. We still have harps on our coins to this day (not because of this incident) but this is only one of thousands of ‘memes’ or cultural traits which have survived through the millenia; a subjective antiquity easily glimpsed if the 'nation' is simply viewed as a synonym for 'people'. It isn't of course, the word is more loaded than that - but when you are talking about a nation you are mainly talking about it's people and their distinctive 'folkways' elaborated and 'thickened' through time. Understanding the history, or indeed the representation of nationalism, implies a sensitivity to questions of semantics as too often among commentators seldom any clarification is provided as to what signifying element within the word 'nation' is actually being referenced.
Certainly we can look to the altered nature of social bonds in the mid 19th century as perhaps uniquely during this time there was a general 'quickening' of the senses;, new worlds were dawning and the changes being wrought seemed to gather a momentum of their own. Also there was a tension that now existed between universalist doctrines such as socialism and liberalism and the often exclusivist character of nationalism. Everyone, in theory, should belong to a particular nation; at least it seems inconceivable that someone should find themselves not belonging to any distinct nation. Take the case of Kossuth who was a born Croat yet is now regarded as the father of Hungarian nationalism. I suspect in the early days there were many instances of such malleable identities. Or of a bilingual Austrian of mixed parentage who spoke both Slovak and German - to whose motherland does he align himself when push comes to shove?
It seems that once monarchy's crisis of legitimacy reached it's height crown princes everywhere tapped into burgeoning nationalist sentiment and increasingly began depicting the interests of their reign as co-extensive with that of the nation. With respect to Prussia we can talk here of a period of 'official' or 'sanctioned' nationalism which took off after Bismarck's early successes. This is opposed to that virulent yet 'unofficial' variant of nationalism which found expression during the short-lived Frankfurt Assembly after the 1848 'disturbances'. In that instance the nationalist calls for a 'Greater' Germany were short-circuited by Prussian intransigence and the lack of a coherent platform amongst the revolutionists - liberals, democrats and nationalists all disagreeing over what demands should be prioritised. Marx, we recall, momentarily dropped his communist credentials to fight the good fight almost from a liberal-democratic perspective; interesting too when you consider the split amongst the German socialists over the 'nationalist' hankering to pursue a war trajectory in 1914.
The rise of nationalism after the Napoleonic Wars has to be tied in generally with these other struggles that so dominated the landscape; extension of the franchise, an increasing separation of church and state, rising middle classes, independent bourgeoise and the spread of print media which continually made reference to the people's common frustrated needs. I suppose in the general ferment of ideas which followed on from the French Revolution, those parochial social bonds which were hitherto delimited by being enmeshed within feudalistic structures (whose apex after all was the title granting absolutist monarch) there emerged instead a flattening, or type of horizontal expansion of perspectives. As communications networks improved, previously self-contained feudalist 'societies' merged in many respects, in large part due to the proliferation of new newspaper publications; people could make reference to a commonality of aims amongst fellow 'citizens', as opposed to the previous demarcation of 'subjects'. Iliteracy wouldn't have been the burden you may expect as the common practice was for the family or neighbours to gather round and often have the paper read from cover to cover by perhap's the solitary literate figure in the village - the Irish nationalist and fenian O' Donovan Rossa in his memoirs remarks as such on his childhood in Cork during the 1820's.
But did all these processes bring into being 'nations' where none had previously existed?
The now universal calls for liberal and democratic reforms heightened political awareness but oftentimes what became apparent is that the greatest stumbling block to those reforms being met came from monopolising factions belonging to a dominant ethnic or cultural group. This was a common complaint throughout the Habsburg territories where Italians chafed at the lack of opportunities for advancement within the northern duchies and Czechs and Slovaks were being sidelined in favour of German-speaking Austrians. We can look at countries like Britain and say that though they never had a native dynasty - the Plantagenets were Norman, the Tudors Welsh, the Stuarts Scottish, the Hanoverians German etc - this didn't prevent the crown's effective fusion with the 'nation' (with the possible exception of the Norman dynasty and the later opposition to the Stuarts).
Charles V, though Holy Roman Emperor and viewed by many as a foreigner still had to make that dreaded visit to Spain and make appointments conducive to Castilian sensitivities - always it seems within the administrative jostlings of 'Empire' there were in-built hierarchies based upon ethnic and cultural differences. 'Nations' and 'nationality' weren't magically conjured into existence in the early 19th century, I feel; the ambitious were acutely aware of the advantages and limitations that belonging to a particular cultural group entailed. Think of the murmurings in court when James Stuart of Scotland began appointing kinsmen to high office or offered them cheap land in Ulster over and above English grandees. It was probably more the case that the populist expression of 'nationality' was contained by the fiercely hierarchical societies which monarchy promoted and once the egalitarian genie was let out the broader based distribution of rights began to manifest what had always been present.
In Italy during1848 there were many divided interests - the southern princes were reluctant to send troops north to aid the struggle against Radetzky lest they be defenceless against their own populations. There was also much 'municipal patriotism', expressed by a lingering loyalty to the city-state which the monarchs in turn exploited to stave off the inevitable. A unified state after all meant the dissolution of their own power; reminiscent of the position faced by the German princes. The position of Austria-Hungary is a very interesting one and something of a wonder that the Habsburgs managed to hold it together for as long as they did. We can go back to the 17th century or earlier and still find the same difficulties confronting its Emperors - how to contain the varied demands of its different subject peoples; being Czech, Slovaks or, Polish were concrete identities to which the Habsburg advisors continually refer, not necessarily principally as 'subjects' - they didn't call the Slovenes 'Carnolians' for instance. There is a recognition that each distinctive group brings it's own peculiar set of administrative headaches.
Most times in any case
the struggle among these groups for rights distinctive of their culture such as
the dropping of compulsory German for armed service or licenses for the printing
of their vernacular (increasingly common decades before the French revolution)
were hardballed against opposing claims from rival 'subgroups' - evincing
'nationality' here should focus on that signifying element within the term which
denotes distinctive cultural groups which where always attempting to achieve
greater status for themselves, even within the confines of absolutism. This I
feel has to be recognised to make any sense of the momentum which nationalism
achieved by the mid 19th century. The two propositions are not mutually
exclusive - yes, there was a "furious" take-off, one that was distinctively
different from what came before it, but also, and crucially, this sense of
'nationhood' did not emerge out of nowhere. Rather than being hatched in a jam
jar, invented ex nihilo or otherwise dreamt up out of the blue in the
form of 'imagined communities' they were the manifestation of social bonds and
forces that were all along present - even if there was no political entity which
catered expressly for its nurturing.
My leaning is toward a need to recognise that a sense of place, culture and history - a feeling of belonging to a distinct people - has always existed and couldn't be swept away by monarchy. Absolutism was the de facto order of the universe and as Christopher Hill once pondered when sifting through the ruins of the English Civil War; "In what sense were people capable of even imagining an alternative to the divine right to rule of kings"? Under this type of ideological sway clearly pressures are imposed on one's naturally felt loyalties towards kith and kin. But this is not to say that both sets of allegiances weren't without their conflicts.
Anderson's "imagined community" thesis was the new buzz word in sociology circles during the 90's and every academic worth his salt had to ingest its fundaments. I think there's a certain perverse strain within the ivory tower complex that revels in promoting work which purports to tear asunder any dearly held "popular misconception". The whole premise though is very conservative politically - however "radical" it's defenders regard themselves. The way I view it, most nationalisms today are secessionist not expansionist and the calls for a federal break up or independence are usually grounded in perfectly legitimate complaints of political/economic marginalisation. The upshot of work of this nature is that once it becomes a standard text (and Anderson's work is easily the most quoted in this field) it's ideas percolate in top-down fashion and forge the mainstream consensus. All expressions of nationalism irrespective of their local peculiarities are now dismissed as a type of mental virus - this is all well and good when your confronted with a chauvinistic Nazi-type superpower but what happens when the nationalism concerned is the authentic expression of a people's wish for non-exploitative autonomous government? As is often the case with a minority people trapped within the confines of a larger nation their struggles are now diminished by being denied the character of an otherwise admirable 'nationalist' impulse; the Kurds in Turkey, "Russian" Chechnya and so on.
I was reading Mark Thomson's book on the break up of Yugoslavia and the sense in which he uses the word 'nationalism' (and its cognates) he says, may be read as identical to the meaning given in Isaiah Berlin's definition; "Nationalism is not consciousness of the reality of national character, nor pride in it. It is a belief in the unique mission of a nation, as being intrinsically superior to the goals or attributes of whatever is outside of it." Now, Serbian aggression under Milosevic is well documented and Berlin's formula may thus appear here to be appropriate but is this what we have come to that we can no longer use the word in a neutral sense? By extension, it's now debased usage is increasingly applied retrospectively so much so that the original great mass movements in the past that shook off their respective tyrannies are now increasingly viewed as a type of collective fever!
It is though an arresting problem with many present day ramifications and as noted above the academic consensus at present appears to favour the late arrival of 'nationalism' and its associated sentiments but sometimes I wonder whether the desire to undermine (often spuriously imputed) and so-called (or inferred) "destructive" nationalisms is impeding proper objective study - I certainly feel this to be the case with a myriad of historical analyses concerning Irish history; as long as the northern question remains a live political issue proper historical objectivity finds itself being increasingly compromised.
My leaning is toward a need to recognise that a sense of place, culture and history - a feeling of belonging to a distinct people - has always existed and couldn't be swept away by monarchy. Absolutism was the de facto order of the universe and as Christopher Hill once pondered when sifting through the ruins of the English Civil War; "In what sense were people capable of even imagining an alternative to the divine right to rule of kings"? Under this type of ideological sway clearly pressures are imposed on one's naturally felt loyalties towards kith and kin. But this is not to say that both sets of allegiances weren't without their conflicts.
Anderson's "imagined community" thesis was the new buzz word in sociology circles during the 90's and every academic worth his salt had to ingest its fundaments. I think there's a certain perverse strain within the ivory tower complex that revels in promoting work which purports to tear asunder any dearly held "popular misconception". The whole premise though is very conservative politically - however "radical" it's defenders regard themselves. The way I view it, most nationalisms today are secessionist not expansionist and the calls for a federal break up or independence are usually grounded in perfectly legitimate complaints of political/economic marginalisation. The upshot of work of this nature is that once it becomes a standard text (and Anderson's work is easily the most quoted in this field) it's ideas percolate in top-down fashion and forge the mainstream consensus. All expressions of nationalism irrespective of their local peculiarities are now dismissed as a type of mental virus - this is all well and good when your confronted with a chauvinistic Nazi-type superpower but what happens when the nationalism concerned is the authentic expression of a people's wish for non-exploitative autonomous government? As is often the case with a minority people trapped within the confines of a larger nation their struggles are now diminished by being denied the character of an otherwise admirable 'nationalist' impulse; the Kurds in Turkey, "Russian" Chechnya and so on.
I was reading Mark Thomson's book on the break up of Yugoslavia and the sense in which he uses the word 'nationalism' (and its cognates) he says, may be read as identical to the meaning given in Isaiah Berlin's definition; "Nationalism is not consciousness of the reality of national character, nor pride in it. It is a belief in the unique mission of a nation, as being intrinsically superior to the goals or attributes of whatever is outside of it." Now, Serbian aggression under Milosevic is well documented and Berlin's formula may thus appear here to be appropriate but is this what we have come to that we can no longer use the word in a neutral sense? By extension, it's now debased usage is increasingly applied retrospectively so much so that the original great mass movements in the past that shook off their respective tyrannies are now increasingly viewed as a type of collective fever!
It is though an arresting problem with many present day ramifications and as noted above the academic consensus at present appears to favour the late arrival of 'nationalism' and its associated sentiments but sometimes I wonder whether the desire to undermine (often spuriously imputed) and so-called (or inferred) "destructive" nationalisms is impeding proper objective study - I certainly feel this to be the case with a myriad of historical analyses concerning Irish history; as long as the northern question remains a live political issue proper historical objectivity finds itself being increasingly compromised.
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