The idea that nations and nationalisms are likely to be here for some time to come, and that this has to do with nationalism’s capacity for ensuring dignity and immortality, may seem both pessimistic and perverse when we consider the excesses and outrages for which nationalists are held responsible throughout the world. Commentators are fond of attributing to nationalism many of the conflicts which infest our planet, and they tend to assume that a world without nations will be free of the attendant ills of racism, fascism and xenophobia. A world without nations, they claim, will be a more stable and peaceful, as well as a more just and free world – a dream that is in fact common to liberals and socialists for whom the nation was at best a necessary stage in the evolution of humanity and at worst a violent threat and distraction.
I want to conclude by briefly examining the arguments against nationalism and demonstrating why the nation and nationalism remain the only realistic basis for a free society of states in the modern world.
The arguments against nationalism are threefold: intellectual, ethical and geo-political.
(1) Intellectually, nationalism is held to be logically incoherent and its basic postulates untenable. These postulates are the principle of collective cultural identity, the principle of collective will and the doctrine of national boundaries.
As far as collective cultural identity is concerned, it is claimed that there are conflicting criteria for determining the national ‘self’. These include language, religion, descent, customs and territory. As Max Weber showed long ago, no one of these criteria can be applied to all the collective cultural identities which claim to be or are recognized as ‘nations’. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, there is a series of overlapping ‘selves’, based on different criteria. Even within a single community, nationalists have espoused different criteria of the nation.1
The same difficulties surround the principle of the national ‘will’. Apart from a daily plebiscite, there is no means of ascertaining its nature, or deciding whether it was in fact a true and free expression of the ‘will of the people’ or of the individuals who compose the nation. There is also the problem of deciding who shall count as ‘the people’. It has been all too easy for demagogues to feel that they alone can interpret the popular will and decide who the people are.2
Similar problems have attended the doctrine of national boundaries. For nationalists, these are usually self-evident; they coincide, as Danton claimed for France and Mazzini for Italy, with ‘natural frontiers’. But it is easy to show that such frontiers are never natural, even when they have been longstanding or distinctive; South Tyrol, for example, remains a disputed area between Italy and Austria. Inhabitants of frontier areas have a habit of refusing to acknowledge the ‘naturalness’ of particular borders.3
All this has led some scholars to conclude that there can be no consistent doctrine of nationalism, and that there are as many nationalisms as there are nations and nationalists.4 This seems to be an altogether erroneous reading of the ideology of nationalism. The very fact that one can seek to analyse a set of sentiments, movements and ideas through a collective term, nationalism, suggests a certain commonality between the different expressions of these sentiments, movements and ideas. One need not deny the great variety of these expressions to concede an underlying pattern, summed up in what I have indicated (in chapter 3) is the ‘core doctrine’ of nationalism.
To grasp the misunderstanding in much of the critique of nationalism, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the main tenets of that doctrine and the basic ideals of nationalist movements. They are:
• The world is divided into nations, each with its own character and destiny.
• The nation is the source of all political power, and loyalty to the nation overrides all other loyalties.
• To be free, human beings must identify with a particular nation.
• To be authentic, each nation must be autonomous.
• For peace and justice to prevail in the world, nations must be free and secure.
The basic ideals that flow from these propositions are three: national identity, national unity and national autonomy. These are the goals, variously interpreted, of nationalists in every period and continent, just as the ‘core doctrine’ represents the sine qua non of nationalist beliefs, even when nationalists have added new motifs to apply the doctrine to the situation of their community. Together, the basic propositions and ideals suggest a working definition of nationalism as an ‘ideological movement for the attainment and maintenance of autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute a “nation”’.5
From these propositions and ideals, there has emerged a set of symbols, myths and concepts which mark off the world of nationalism from other worlds of symbolism, mythology and discourse, and which have energized and comforted populations all over the world. Ceremonies, symbols and myths are crucial to nationalism; through them nations are formed and celebrated.
Now these propositions, ideals and definitions of nationalism and the nation make no mention of specific criteria of national identity. Any cultural element can function as a diacritical mark or badge of the nation – though it may make a considerable difference which is chosen in certain circumstances. One should not therefore castigate nationalisms for inconsistency on this score, since there is nothing in the core doctrine or ideals which lays down which cultural elements must serve as criteria of the national self. Similarly with the concepts of ‘national will’ and ‘natural frontiers’. Nationalism does not have a theory of how the national will or the national boundaries may be ascertained; it requires other ideologies for that purpose, and so nationalism has been combined with all kinds of other movements and ideologies from liberalism to communism and racism. Nationalism’s core doctrine provides no more than a basic framework for social and political order in the world, and it must be filled out by other idea-systems and by the particular circumstances of each community’s situation at the time. To charge nationalism, therefore, with logical incoherence is to miss the point – and the power – of the ideological movement: nationalism combines a high degree of flexible abstraction with a unique ability to tap fundamental popular needs and aspirations, but it does not pretend to offer a comprehensive and consistent account of history and society.
(2) The ethical arguments against nationalism are, first, that it is necessarily extremist in nature; that its concern for cultural homogeneity leads to exclusiveness and social closure against minorities; and that it denies the independence, diversity and human rights of individuals.6
There is considerable truth in some of these arguments, especially when applied to specific instances of nationalism. But, as general arguments, they need careful qualification. The idea that all nationalists are fanatical doctrinaires of the will and that every nationalism is extremist in nature is belied by the many movements, regimes and leaders that have been on the whole democratic, liberal and moderate; the cases of Masaryk and Czechoslovakia, Prat de la Riba and Catalonia, McDiarmid and Scotland and Snellman and Finland come to mind. Outside Europe, too, we can find cases of relatively moderate nationalism, if we allow for the very different social and political circumstances: in the Ivory Coast, Zambia, Ghana after Nkrumah, Tunisia, Egypt since Nasser, Turkey since Ataturk, early Indian nationalism, Japan since 1945, Mexico since Cardenas. Though it cannot be claimed that many regimes in the states of Latin America, Africa and Asia are democratic or liberal, their failings cannot be attributed to nationalist extremism; many other factors account for the often non-democratic nature of these regimes. The important point is that nationalism comes in many forms and degrees; they cannot be lumped together under a single rubric of ‘extremism’.
Moreover, not all nationalisms have equally striven for cultural homogeneity. What all nationalists demand is a single public culture. There are cases where they are happy to concede some degree of private culture for ethnic and religious minorities, provided these do not impinge too much on the national identity created by the public culture of the national state. These are not, as is often thought, only cases of civic nationalisms. As mentioned earlier, civic nations can be just as severe to minorities as ethnic nations. Rather, this tolerance tends to be found in the plural nations created by immigrant societies, though it is also possible to find some toleration of minority rights in dominant ethnie nations like Finland, Malaysia or the former Czechoslavakia.
Nor do all nationalisms deny basic human rights and individual diversity. This is more a function of the type of secondary nationalist ideology adopted. The ‘core doctrine’, while demanding primary loyalty to the nation, says nothing about diversity or human rights. It is in the ‘organic’ version of nationalism promulgated by the German Romantics that there is a tendency to see human beings simply as specimens of their national group; but it is a mistake to regard the German Romantic doctrine as normative for nationalism, if only because French Revolutionary doctrines have been even more influential, for example in Africa, where human rights are linked to national liberation. Nevertheless, while nationalism is patently not a democratic or liberal movement, the denial of nationalism’s central tenets is likely to impede progress to human rights and democracy, as Engels observed about Polish nationalism.7
(3) These arguments are also relevant to the main geo-political charge against nationalism: that it is destabilizing and divisive. Again, this is to overstate the case. Of course, one can point to particular cases of destabilization and division, of nationalists deliberately stirring up resentments among populations in ethnically mixed areas like Bosnia or the Caucasus. But, as the examples of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Kurdistan and Ethiopia demonstrate, it is not nationalism per se that is responsible for the breakdown of states; nationalisms tend to emerge on the ruins of states that are, for other reasons as well as ethnic ones, no longer viable. In other cases, ethnic nationalisms may battle long and in vain, as has occurred with the Moro in the Philippines or the Nagas in India. Where states are for one reason or another no longer viable, nationalism may offer an alternative to the often unstable (because coercive) status quo, one that is more viable because it is better attuned to popular aspirations in particular regions. The divisiveness and destabilization of so many nationalisms is simply the other side of the coin of their popular, unifying and solidaristic dimensions. Nationalism cannot be held responsible for the rivalry of states, which long pre-dated the emergence of the doctrine. What nationalism has done is to ground the competition of sovereign states on a mass cultural base, thereby providing some social cohesion in periods of rapid social change; it did not invent that rivalry.8
From what I have said, it can be seen that while the charges laid against nationalism apply with force to specific doctrines and particular movements, they often either miss the point or overstate the case in regard to ‘nationalism-in-general’.
In conclusion I want to set out briefly three arguments which together suggest both a qualified defence of the plural order of nations and the unlikelihood of any early supersession of nations and nationalism. These arguments are: that nationalism is politically necessary; that national identity is socially functional; and that the nation is historically embedded.
(1) In chapter 4, I discussed the importance of nationalism for a modern plural world order. Given the plurality of recognized states since at least 1648, the introduction of nationalist principles since 1789 can be seen as underpinning, enlarging and humanizing the political order of the interstate system by basing it on cultural and historical criteria, that is, on the prior existence of historic culture-communities. These are popular communities whose culture and traditions express their aspirations as a community, and for whom nationalism seeks a place in the distribution of world power. That is why nationalisms so frequently strive against the existing states and interstate order, so as to make room for submerged and unrecognized culture-communities in a world of national states. Moreover, nationalists contend that each state in the plural world order should possess a distinctive political personality based on a separate and unique culture-community or nation. This became evident to others besides nationalists once the powers of the monarch had been eroded and transferred to the sovereign people. The question ‘who are the people?’ became unavoidable, and nationalism provided a general answer in the shape of a historic community of public culture, which the nationalists were helping to adapt and complete. Soon no other legitimation for an order of plural sovereigns, and no other source of political power, became acceptable.
It follows that nations and nationalisms remain political necessities because (and for as long as) they alone can ground the interstate order in the principles of popular sovereignty and the will of the people, however defined. Only nationalism can secure the assent of the governed to the territorial units to which they have been assigned, through a sense of collective identification with historic culture-communities in their ‘homelands’. As long as any global order is based on a balance of competing states, so long will the principle of nationality provide the only widely acceptable legitimation and focus of popular mobilization. Since there is little sign that the competition of states, even in Europe, is being superseded by some completely new political order, the likelihood of the nation which forms the raison d’être of the state and its community of will being transcended remains remote. Even if a number of states were to pool their sovereignties and even if their national communities were to agree to federate within a single political framework, the nation and its nationalism would long remain the only valid focus and constituency for ascertaining the popular will. Elsewhere there is little sign of such federative activity, and a pluralist world of nations and national states remains the only safeguard against imperial tyranny.
(2) National identity, as opposed to other kinds of collective identity, is pre-eminently functional for modernity, being suited to the needs of a wide variety of social groups and individuals in the modern epoch. This is not primarily because nationalism is functional for an industrial society which requires armies of mobile, literate citizens for its effective operation. Rather, the myths, memories, symbols and ceremonies of nationalism provide the sole basis for such social cohesion and political action as modern societies, with their often heterogenous social and ethnic composition and varied aims, can muster. Nationalism is an ideology of historic territory, and it concentrates the energies of individuals and groups within a clearly demarcated ‘homeland’, in which all citizens are deemed to be brothers and sisters and to which they therefore ‘belong’. By rehearsing the rites of fraternity in a political community in its homeland at periodic intervals, the nation communes with and worships itself, making its citizens feel the power and warmth of their collective identification and inducing in them a heightened self-awareness and social reflexivity.9
As a result, individual members come to perceive the social functions of their dependence on the nation, including such collective needs as the preservation of their community’s irreplaceable culture values, the rediscovery of its authentic roots, the celebration and emulation of its exemplars of heroic virtue, the re-creation of feelings of fraternity and kinship and the mobilization of citizens for common goals. From these needs, so often the themes of communal exhortations, flow the rituals and ceremonies, customs and festivals, traditions and symbols which commemorate and celebrate the nation in every generation. Their common purpose is to arouse in the citizens a national consciousness and generate a national will, and they achieve these ends through mass, public displays and vivid imagery. Though some brave souls may oppose particular national regimes, most of the citizens have shown themselves all too willing to participate in and celebrate the rites of the nation and accept the received narratives and myths of national identity. Defections have always been minimal and most members to this day continue to identify with the ideal version of the nation portrayed by nationalism.10
Moreover, the sense of national identity is often powerful enough to engender a spirit of self-sacrifice on behalf of the nation in many, if not most, of its citizens. This is especially true of crises and wartime. Here one can witness the degree to which most citizens are prepared to endure hardships and make personal sacrifices ‘in defence of the nation’, to the point of laying down their lives willingly, often in vast numbers, as occurred in several of the combatant countries during both World Wars. Such self-sacrifice on this scale is unimaginable for any other kind of collective cultural identity and community in our epoch, except perhaps for a few religious communities, and it is the singular power of the nation in eliciting mass sacrifice that has made it so often the object of unscrupulous demagogues. By the same token, the nation has become the main vehicle of warfare and national identity the chief justification for participation in lethal combat. England and Ireland; France and Germany; Greece and Turkey; Israel and the Arabs; India and Pakistan; the Khmers and Vietnamese: the roll-call of ethno-national antagonisms in the modern epoch recalls how wars have strengthened national consciousness and how the mobilization of nations has changed the nature of warfare for ever.11
All this in itself is insufficient to predict the persistence of national identity. As has been often demonstrated, the functionality of an institution or ideology is no proof of its continued presence or influence. At the same time, the many functions that national identity continues to perform need to be taken into account in assessing the vitality of contemporary nationalism.
(3) As I have argued throughout, the nation is historically embedded. It is the modern heir and transformation of the much older and commoner ethnie and as such gathers to itself all the symbols and myths of pre-modern ethnicity. Combining these pre-modern ties and sentiments with the explosive modern charge of popular sovereignty and mass, public culture, nationalism has created a unique modern drama of national liberation and popular mobilization in an ancestral homeland. The older myths of ethnic election – the belief in the conditional chosenness of certain communities whose divine privileges depended on the continued performance of their duties – have not withered away. Nationalism has given them a new lease of life, inspiring a yearning for collective regeneration in the homeland and for salvation of the national elect provided they repossess their authentic identity and ancestral soil, as has been so vividly demonstrated by Zionism and Armenian nationalism.12
There are other examples of the historical embeddedness of the nation in much older ethnic frameworks. While the idea of the nation can be disembedded, generalized and transferred to milieux where there is no obvious historic ethnie or ancestral homeland, as in such heterogenous immigrant island communities as Trinidad and Mauritius, most actual nations have derived their power from their popular and political links with much older ethnic communities and identities. This has allowed nationalists to return, rediscover and reappropriate traditional customs, symbols and ceremonies, such as the Welsh Eisteddfodau, which despite several adaptations and changes, broadly followed the main lines of the medieval Welsh bardic contests which had gradually died out in the sixteenth century but had survived in the popular consciousness in the local ‘almanack eisteddfodau’. Alternatively, religious elites may preserve older forms of celebration, such as the Jewish agricultural festivals of ancient Palestine which were kept from year to year by increasingly urbanized diaspora communities, to be revived as national festivals by the early Zionists on their return to Israel.13
Heroes and sagas have also been reappropriated by modern nationalism for its own ends. Muhammad and Moses have ceased to be prophets and servants of God, and have become national leaders par excellence; mythological bards like Oisin (Ossian) and Vainamoinen have become exemplars of ancient Irish and Finnish national wisdom; the heroes of the Ramayana have become prototypes of Indian national resistance. What is of interest here is not the uses to which these ancient exemplars have been put by often unscrupulous leaders, but the fervour of the believing masses. The power of their identification with an ethnic past with its heroic myths and legends, symbols and values, is vital to the success of the nationalist enterprise. It is also decisive for the content of the ensuing nationalism. The ethnic past sets limits to the manipulations of the elites and provides the ideals for the restored nation and its destiny. In this way, the nation remains embedded in a past that shapes its future as much as any present global trends. The ‘blocking presentism’ of so much latterday analysis should not blind one to the continuing if sometimes hidden power of the nation’s lineage, and to the persistence of particular ethnic ties and sentiments in which the nation is so often embedded.14
But it is not simply the embeddedness of the nation as it is known today that is at issue; its destiny too owes its meaning and direction to successive interpretations of the ethnic past. It is this linking of ethno-history with national destiny that works most powerfully to uphold and preserve a world of nations. The modern nation has become what ethno-religious communities were in the past: communities of history and destiny that confer on mortals a sense of immortality through the judgement of posterity, rather than through divine judgement in an afterlife.
This ability to satisfy a more general craving for immortality marks out nationalism from other ideologies and belief-systems of the modern world. In some areas, it has enabled nationalism to ally itself with world religions like Islam or Buddhism; in others to substitute itself for crumbling traditions. In both cases, however, what sets out as essentially secular ideology and symbolism of culture and politics reveals a transcendental dimension, one that raises the individual above the earthly round and out of immediate time. In this sense, nationalism can be regarded as a ‘religion surrogate’ and the nation as a continuation, but also a transformation, of pre-modern ethno-religious community.15
I have argued that, despite the capacity of nationalisms to generate widespread terror and destruction, the nation and nationalism provide the only realistic socio-cultural framework for a modern world order. They have no rivals today. National identity too remains widely attractive and effective and is felt by many people to satisfy their needs for cultural fulfilment, rootedness, security and fraternity. Many people are still prepared to answer the call of the nation and lay down their lives for its cause. Finally, nations are linked by the chains of memory, myth and symbol to that widespread and enduring type of community, the ethnie, and this is what gives them their unique character and their profound hold over the feelings and imaginations of so many people.
None of this is to deny ‘the dark side of nationalism’, its capacity for division, destabilization and destruction. What has to be explained is the ubiquitous power of nations and nationalism in a global world, and this can be done only if one grasps their ethno-historical foundations and the manner in which modern trends have revitalized and have been shaped by persisting ethnic ties.
In the light of all these considerations, it would be folly to predict an early supersession of nationalism and an imminent transcendence of the nation. Both remain indispensable elements of an interdependent world and a mass-communications culture. For a global culture seems unable to offer the qualities of collective faith, dignity and hope that only a ‘religion surrogate’, with its promise of a territorial culture-community across the generations, can provide. Over and beyond any political or economic benefits that ethnic nationalism can confer, it is this promise of collective but terrestrial immortality, outfacing death and oblivion, that has helped to sustain so many nations and national states in an era of unprecedented social change and to renew so many ethnic minorities that seemed to be doomed in an era of technological uniformity and corporate efficiency.