Encyclopedia
Nationalism is an ideology that holds that a nation is the fundamental unit for
human social life, and takes precedence over any other social and political principles. Nationalism makes certain political claims based upon this belief: above all, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, that each nation is entitled to its own state, and that the borders of the state should be congruent with the borders of the nation. Nationalism refers to both a political doctrine and any collective action by political and
social movements on behalf of specific nations. Nationalism has had an enormous influence upon
world history, since the
nation-state has become the dominant form of state organization. Most of the world's population now lives in states which are, at least nominally, nation-states. Historians also use the term 'nationalism' to refer to this historical transition, and to the emergence of nationalist ideology and movements.
Principles of Nationalism
This section sets out the components of nationalist ideology as seen by nationalists themselves. .
Nationalism is a form of universalism when it makes universal claims about how the world should be organised, but it is particularistic with regard to individual nations. The combination of both is characteristic for the ideology, for instance in these assertions:
- "in a nation-state, the language of the nation should be the official language, and all citizens should speak it, and not a foreign language."
- "the official language of Denmark should be Danish, and all Danish citizens should speak it."
The universalistic principles bring nationalism into conflict with competing forms of universalism, the particularistic principles bring specific nationalist movements into conflict with rival nationalisms - for instance, the Danish-German tensions over their
reciprocal linguistic minorities.
The starting point of nationalism is the existence of nations, which it takes as a given. Nations are typically seen as entities with a long history: most nationalists do not believe a nation can be created artificially. Nationalist movements see themselves as the representative of an existing, centuries-old nation. However, some theories of nationalism imply the reverse order - that the nationalist movements created the sense of national identity, and then a political unit corresponding to it, or that an existing state promoted a 'national' identity for itself.
Nationalists see nations as an
inclusive categorisation of human beings - assigning every individual to one specific nation. In fact, nationalism sees most human activity as national in character. Nations have national symbols, a
national culture, a national
music and national
literature; national folklore, a national mythology and - in some cases - even a national
religion. Individuals share national values and a national identity, admire the national hero, eat the national dish and play the
national sport.
Nationalists define individual nations on the basis of certain criteria, which distinguish one nation from another; and determine who is a member of each nation. These criteria typically include a shared
language,
culture, and/or shared values which are predominantly represented within a specific ethnic group.
National identity refers both to these defining criteria, and to the shared heritage of each group. Membership in a nation is usually involuntary and determined by birth. Individual nationalisms vary in their degree of internal uniformity: some are monolithic, and tolerate little variance from the national norms. Academic nationalism theory emphasises that national identity is contested, reflecting differences in region, class,
gender, and language or dialect. A recent development is the idea of a national core culture, in Germany the Leitkultur, which emphasises a minimal set of non-negotiable values: this is primarily a strategy of cultural assimilation in response to immigration.
Nationalism has a strong territorial component, with an inclusive categorisation of territory corresponding to the categorisation of individuals. For each nation, there is a territory which is uniquely associated with it, the national homeland, and together they account for most habitable land. This is reflected in the geopolitical claims of nationalism, which seeks to order the world as a series of
nation-states, each based on the national homeland of its respective nation.
Territorial claims characterise the politics of nationalist movements. Established nation-states also make an implicit territorial claim, to secure their own continued existence: sometimes it is specified in the national
constitution. In the nationalist view, each nation has a moral entitlement to a sovereign state: this is usually taken as a given.
The nation-state is intended to guarantee the existence of a nation, to preserve its distinct identity, and to provide a territory where the national culture and ethos are dominant - nationalism is also a philosophy of the state. It sees a nation-state as a
necessity for each nation: secessionist national movements often complain about their second-class status as a minority within another nation. This specific view of the duties of the state influenced the introduction of national
education systems, often teaching a standard curriculum, national cultural policy, and national language policy. In turn, nation-states appeal to a national cultural-historical mythos to justify their existence, and to confer political legitimacy - acquiescence of the population in the authority of the government.
Nationalists recognise that 'non-national' states exist and existed, but do not see them as a legitimate form of state. The struggles of early nationalist movements were often directed against such non-national states, specifically multi-ethnic
empires such as
Austria-Hungary and the
Ottoman Empire. Most multi-ethnic empires have disappeared, but some secessionist movements see the
Russian Federation and
China as comparable non-national, imperial states. At least one modern state is clearly not a nation-state: the
Vatican City exists solely to provide a sovereign territorial unit for the
Catholic Church.
Nationalism as ideology includes ethical principles: that the moral duties of individuals to fellow members of the nation override those to non-members. Nationalism claims that national loyalty, in case of conflict, overrides local loyalties, and all other loyalties to family, friends, profession, religion, or class.
Theory of nationalism
Background and problems
Specific examples of nationalism are extremely diverse, the issues are emotional, and the conflicts often bloody. The theory of nationalism has always been complicated by this background, and by the intrusion of nationalist ideology into the theory. There are also national differences in the theory of nationalism, since people define nationalism on the basis of their local experience. Theory may overemphasise conflicting nationalist movements, ethnic tension, and
war - diverting attention from general theoretical issues; for instance, the characteristics of nation-states.
Nationalist movements are surrounded by other nationalist movements and nations, and this may colour their version of nationalism. It may focus purely on self-determination, and ignore other nations. When conflicts arise, however, ideological attacks upon the identity and legitimacy of the 'enemy' nationalism may become the focus. In the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, both sides have claimed that the other is not a 'real' nation, and therefore has no right to a state.
Jingoism and chauvinism make exaggerated claims about the superiority of one nation over another. National stereotypes are also common, and are usually insulting. This kind of negative nationalism, directed at other nations, is certainly a nationalist phenomenon, but not a sufficient basis for a general theory of nationalism.
Issues in nationalism theory
The first studies of nationalism were generally historical accounts of nationalist movements. At the end of the 19th century,
Marxists and other
socialists produced political analyses that were critical of the nationalist movements then active in central and eastern Europe. Most
sociological theories of nationalism date from after the
Second World War. Some nationalism theory is about issues which concern nationalists themselves, such as who belongs to the nation and who does not, as well as the precise meaning of 'belonging'.
Origin of nations and nationalism
Recent general theory has looked at underlying issues, and above all the question of which came first, nations or nationalism. Nationalist activists see themselves as representing a pre-existing nation, and the primordialist theory of nationalism agrees. It sees nations, or at least ethnic groups, as a social reality dating back twenty thousand years.
The
modernist theories imply that until around 1800, almost no-one had more than local loyalties. National identity and unity were originally imposed from above, by European states, because they were necessary to modernise of economy and society. In this theory, nationalist conflicts are an unintended side-effect. For example,
Ernest Gellner argued that nations are a by-product of industrialization, which required a large literate and culturally homogeneous population. According to
Charles Tilly, states promoted nationalism in order to assure the popular consent with
conscription into large modern armies and taxation, which was necessary to maintain such armies. According to the modernist view, the first true nation state was created by the
French Revolution, though the tendencies have existed since the beginning of the Modern Era. In addition to the top-down nationalism, there were also cases of the bottom-up nationalism, such as the German Romantic nationalism, materialized in the resistance against
Napoleon.
More recent theorists of nationalism emphasise that nations are a socially constructed phenomenon. Benedict Anderson, for example, described nations as "imagined communities". Gellner comments: "Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist." Modernisation theorists see such things as the
printing press and
capitalism as necessary conditions for nationalism.
Anthony D. Smith proposed a synthesis of primordialist and modernist views. According to Smith, the preconditions for the formation of a nation are as follows:
- A fixed homeland
- High autonomy
- Hostile surroundings
- Memories of battles
- Sacred centres
- Languages and scripts
- Special customs
- Historical records and thinking
Those preconditions may create powerful common mythology. Therefore, the mythic homeland is in reality more important for the national identity than the actual territory occupied by the nation. Smith also posits that nations are formed through the inclusion of the whole populace , constitution of legal and political institutions, nationalist ideology, international recognition and drawing up of borders.
Theoretical literature on nationalism
There is a large amount of theoretical and empirical literature on nationalism. The following is a minimal selection, and a series of capsule summaries that do not do justice to the range of views expressed.
- Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Anderson argues that nations are imagined political communities, and are imagined to be limited and sovereign. Their development is due to the decline of other types of imagined community, especially in the face of capitalist production of print media.
- Armstrong, John. 1982. Nations Before Nationalism. Armstrong traces the development of national identities from origins in antiquity and the medieval world.
- Breuilly, John. 1992. Nationalism and the State. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press. This approach focuses on the politics of nationalism, in particular on nationalism as a response to the imperatives of the modern state. It employs the mode of comparative history to study a large number of different cases of nationalism.
- Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. This work links nationalism to the homogenising imperatives of industrial society and the reactions of minority cultures to those imperatives.
- Greenfeld, Liah. 1992. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Greenfeld argues that nationalism existed at an earlier age than previously thought: as early as the sixteenth century in the case of England.
- Hechter, Michael. 1975. Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hechter attributes nationalism in the "Celtic fringe" of Britain and Ireland to the reinforcing divisions of culture and the division of labour.
- Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This collection of essays, especially Hobsbawm's introduction and chapter on turn-of-the-century Europe, argues that the nation is a prominent type of invented tradition.
- Kedourie, Elie. 1960. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson. Kedourie focuses on the role of disaffected German intellectuals in developing the doctrine of nationalism at the beginning of the nineteenth century from Kant's idea of the autonomy of the will and Herder's belief in the primacy of linguistic communities in establishing modes of thought.
- Kedourie, Elie, ed. 1971. Nationalism in Asia and Africa. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Kedourie's introduction to this volume of nationalist texts extends his analysis in his earlier work to the efforts of intellectuals in colonial states.
- Nairn, Tom. 1977. The Break-up of Britain. London: New Left Books. Marxist historian Nairn traces nationalism to the confrontation of colonialism, which leaves indigenous elites without recourse to any resources but their own population.
- Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith traces modern nations and nationalism to pre-modern ethnic sources, arguing for the existence of an "ethnic core" in modern nations.
Historical evolution of nationalism
Prior to 1900
Most theories of nationalism assume a European origin of the
nation-state. The modern state is often seen as emerging with the
Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, though this view is disputed. This treaty created the 'Westphalian system' of states, which recognised each other's sovereignty and territory. Some of the signatories, such as the
Dutch Republic, qualify as a nation-state, but in 1648 most states in Europe were still non-national.
Many, but not all, see the major transition to nation-states as originating in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Beginning with
romantic nationalism, nationalist movements arose throughout Europe, a process accelerated by the
French Revolution and the conquests of
Napoleon Bonaparte. Some of these movements were separatist, directed against large empires: an early example is the
Greek Revolution . Others sought to unify a divided or fragmented territory, as in the
Italian unification under the rule of
Piedmont-
Sardinia. These movements promoted a national identity and culture: in the 1848 Revolutions in Europe they were often associated with
liberal demands. By the end of the 19th century most people accepted that Europe was divided into nations, and personally identified with one of these nations. The collapse of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
Ottoman Empire after the
First World War accelerated the formation of nation-states.
According to the standard view, before the 19th century people had local, regional, or religious loyalties, but no idea of nationhood. The typical state in Europe was a dynastic state, ruled by a royal house: if there were any loyalties above regional level, they were owed to the king and the ruling house. Dynastic states could acquire territory by royal marriage, and lose it by division of inheritance - which is now seen as absurd. Nationalism introduced the idea that each nation has a specific territory, and that beyond this point the claims of other nations apply. Nation-states, in principle, do not seek to conquer territory. However, nationalist movements rarely agreed on where the border should be. As the nationalist movements grew, they introduced new territorial disputes in Europe.
Nationalism also determined the political life of 19th century Europe. Where the nation was part of an empire, the national liberation struggle was also a struggle against older autocratic regimes, and nationalism was allied with liberal anti-monarchical movements. Where the nation-state was a consolidation of an older monarchy, as in
Spain, nationalism was itself conservative and monarchical. Most nationalist movements began in opposition to the existing order, but by the 20th century, there were regimes which primarily identified themselves as nationalist.
The standard theory of the 19th-century origin of nation-states is disputed. One problem with it is that the
South American
independence struggles and the American Revolution predate most European nationalist movements. Some countries, such as the
Netherlands and
England, seem to have had a clear national identity well before the 19th century.
20th Century nationalism
By the end of the 19th century, nationalist ideas had begun to spread to
Asia. In
India, nationalism began to encourage calls for the end of British rule. The 20th century nationalist movement in India is generally associated with
Mahatma Gandhi, although many other leaders were involved as well. In
China, nationalism influenced the
1911 Revolution. In
Japan, nationalism and Japanese "exceptionalism" influenced Japanese
imperialism.
World War I led to to the creation of new nation-states in Europe. This was encouraged by the United States, which rejected the legitimacy of the former multi-ethnic empires, see
Wilsonianism. France, which sought to to isolate Germany and Austria, also encouraged the creation of potential client states. The
Ottoman Empire and the
Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated. The
Versailles Treaty, based upon US
President Wilson's
Fourteen Points, partially conformed the division into new nation-states. In the Middle East, the
Arab Revolt did not lead to new independent states: the victorious western powers secured a
League of Nations mandate for
Iraq,
Lebanon,
Palestine including
Transjordan, and
Syria. The
Turkish War of Independence created a new nation state from the core of the Ottoman Empire. In the east of Europe, the
Russian Empire had collapsed, as a result of the
Russian Revolution of 1917. The
Anglo-Irish War led to the partition of
Ireland into the
Irish Free State and
Northern Ireland.
However, multi-nation and multi-ethnic states survived in Europe; and two new ones emerged,
Czechoslovakia , and the
Kingdom of Yugoslavia, . In the interwar period, the extreme nationalist movements of
fascism and
Nazism came to power in
Italy and
Germany respectively, and similar groups took over several other European countries during the late
1930s. This new wave of nationalism had powerful
racist undertones, and it culminated in
World War II and
the Holocaust.
The horrors of World War II discredited militant nationalism as an ideology, but scarcely altered the division of Europe into nation-states. Outside Europe, the war initiated a new wave of nation-state formation, through the independence of African and Asian nations from European
colonial empires. The most dramatic
decolonisation began in the late 1950's in
Africa, which was transformed from a collection of European colonies into a continent of nation-states. Few of them corresponded to the ideal nation-state , but most still exist. Ironically, the one that best met those criteria,
Somalia, disintegrated. The
Algerian War of Independence was the most bloody of the decolonisation wars in Africa: some decolonisations were peaceful.
Rhodesia and the
Portuguese colonies of
Mozambique and
Angola delayed decolonisation for a time.
The
collapse of the Soviet Union led to an unexpected revival of national movements in Europe around 1990. Its constituent states became independent, for the second time in the case of the
Baltic states -
Belarus,
Ukraine,
Moldova,
Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan,
Kyrgyzstan,
Armenia,
Azerbaijan,
Georgia,
Latvia,
Estonia and
Lithuania. The second
Yugoslavia broke up into nation states, some with predecessor states such as the Nazi-oriented
Independent State of Croatia, some as new sovereign states. Within established nation-states, there are many secessionist movements, some of them seeking the creation of a new sovereign state, for instance in
Quebec. The unresolved status of in
Northern Ireland led to protracted violence known as
The Troubles, but without changes in the border.
In the second half of the 20th century, some trends emerged which might indicate a weakening of the nation-state and nationalism. The
European Union is widely seen transferring power from the national level, to both sub-national and supra-national levels. Critics of
globalization often appeal to feelings of national identity, culture, and sovereignty. Free trade agreements, such as
NAFTA and the GATT, and the increasing internationalisation of trade markets, are seen as damaging to the national economy, and have led to a revival of economic nationalism. Protest movements vehemently oppose these negative aspects of globalization, .
Not all anti-globalists are nationalists, but nationalism continues to assert itself in response to those trends. Nationalist parties continue to do well in elections, and most people continue to have a strong sense of attachment to their nationality. Moreover, globalism and European federalism are not always opposed to nationalism. For example, theorists of
Chinese nationalism within the
People's Republic of China have articulated the idea that China's national power is substantially enhanced, rather than being reduced, by engaging in international trade and multinational organizations. For a time sub-national groups such as
Catalan autonomists and
Welsh nationalists supported a stronger
European Union in the hope that a Europe of the regions would limit the power of the present nation-states. However, with
Euroscepticism now widespread in the EU, this transformation is no longer on its political agenda.
Language and Nationalism
A common language has been a defining characteristic of the nation, and an ideal for nationalists. For example, in France before the
French Revolution,
regional languages such as
Breton and
Occitan were spoken, which were mutually incomprehensible. Standard French was also spoken in large parts of the country and had also been the language of administration, but after the Revolution it was imposed as the national language in non-French-speaking regions. For instance, in
Brittany, Celtic names were forbidden. The formation of nation-states, and their consolidation after independence, is generally accompanied by policies to restrict, replace, or abandon minority languages. This accelerates the tendency noted in
sociolinguistic research that high-status languages displace low-status languages. See also: Language policy in France.
Some theorists believe that nationalism became pronounced in the
19th century simply because language became a more important unifier due to increased
literacy. With more people reading
newspapers,
books,
pamphlets and so on, which were increasingly widely available to read since the spread of the printing press, it became possible for the first time to develop a broader cultural attachment beyond the local community. At the same time, differences in language solidified, breaking down old dialects, and excluding those from completely different language groups.
Nationalist movements from
Ireland to
India promote the teaching, revival preservation, and use of traditional languages, such as
Celtic languages,
Hebrew, and
Hindi.
The
United States, a country which historically welcomed immigrants of varying nationality, has what can be seen as a pattern of discrimination against languages other than English. Prominent examples are the
German language, which was nearly eradicated during
World War I, and
French and
Italian, which have nearly disappeared from everyday life. Today
Spanish is a second language across large portion of the country. Some politicians, such as
Pat Buchanan have consciously opposed the rise of Spanish as a second American language, for fear that it would undermine unity in the American national character.
In the
Arab World during the colonial period, the
Turkish language,
French language,
Spanish language and
English language were often imposed, although the intensity of imposition varied widely. When the colonial period ended , a process of "Arabisation" began; reviving
Arabic to unify their states and to facilitate a broader Arab identity, motivated by
Pan-Arabism. Countries such as
Algeria and
Western Sahara underwent large scale Arabisations, changing from French and Spanish to Arabic respectively.
However within the Arab World, some nationalistic attempts were made to emancipate a domestic vernacular and treat
classical Arabic as a formal foreign language, which was often incomprehensible to the non-literate population of nominally Arab countries, which were politically - but not necessarily linguistically, culturally or ethnically, Arabized. These policies were first promoted in Egypt in the early 20th century by the Egyptian scholar and nationalist Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, who called for the formalization of the Egyptian Vernacular as the native language of the Egyptian people.
Similar attempts to emphasise minority languages completely independent of Arabic were made by the
Nubians, speakers of
Nobiinm who are split between
Egypt and
Sudan, and relatively more successfully by the Imazighen in
Morocco.
Types of nationalism
Nationalism may manifest itself as part of official state ideology or as a popular movement and may be expressed along civic, ethnic,
cultural,
religious or ideological lines. These self-definitions of the nation are used to classify types of nationalism. However such categories are not mutually exclusive and many nationalist movements combine some or all of these elements to varying degrees. Nationalist movements can also be classified by other criteria, such as scale and location.
Some political theorists make the case that any distinction between forms of nationalism is false. In all forms of nationalism, the populations believe that they share some kind of common culture, and culture can never be wholly separated from ethnicity. The United States, for example, has "God" on its coinage and in its
Pledge of Allegiance, and designates official holidays which are seen by some to promote cultural biases. The United States has an ethnic theory of being American , and, for a short period in the 20th Century, had a committee to investigate
Un-American Activities.
Civic nationalism
Civic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy from the active participation of its
citizenry, from the degree to which it represents the "will of the people". It is often seen as originating with
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and especially the social contract theories which take their name from his 1762 book
The Social Contract. Civic nationalism lies within the traditions of rationalism and
liberalism, but as a form of nationalism it is contrasted with ethnic nationalism. Membership of the civic nation is considered voluntary. Civic-national ideals influenced the development of representative democracy in countries such as the United States and France.
Ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism, or ethnonationalism, defines the nation in terms of ethnicity, which always includes some element of descent from previous generations. It also includes ideas of a culture shared between members of the group and with their ancestors, and usually a shared language. Membership in the nation is hereditary. The state derives political legitimacy from its status as homeland of the ethnic group, and from its function to protect the national group and facilitate its cultural and social life, as a group. Ideas of ethnicity are very old, but modern ethnic nationalism was heavily influenced by
