Germany, Europe and the Persistence of Nations

Transformation, Interests and Identity, 1989-1996

Stephen Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429850875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Published in 1998, this book is an articulate and densely documented account of political, cultural and historical forces and tensions involved in contemporary European integration; most especially concerning Germany. In doing so it provides an effective fusion of a vast array of material from what are normally separate disciplines.

The book investigates contemporary resonances of identifications and conceptions of political boundaries that appeared in Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. It argues that within a 'supranationalising' Europe, national identity and nationalism have not disappeared as cultural and political phenomena. Rather they persist and manifest themselves in variable forms at popular and elite levels. This is the basis for Europe's condition of far from completed unity, at the centre of which is now a reunited Germany, more sure of itself but less sure of the world around it.

1 Nations and Nationalism

'nation' is an elastic concept - political, cultural, psychological dimensions, reflect the intensity of national consciousness the strength of which may depend on the particular combination of political and cultural parameters in the historical experience of the respective nation. Difference in historical experience may lead to a different awareness of a nation, with respect to both its constituent elements or patterns and the intensity of this awareness.¹

Not all nations are alike and neither are all nationalisms. Problems of definition which threaten to undermine enquiries into nations and nationalism also animate academic fascination.² In attempting to bring some conceptual clarity to the subject, reference to 'elasticity' or some similar terminology is a useful start. As James Coleman states, 'nationality can be seen as consisting of whatever components form the basis for the members' identity' which 'sometimes, but not always, includes a common language, a common religion, a geographic territory, ethnic consanguinity'.³ If there is a common theme it is that a group of people conceiving of themselves as a 'nation' presumes the existence of other 'nations' and, necessarily, differences between them. Like class, gender and race, nation constitutes a political category, but one more flexible and which can incorporate the first three.⁴ In the contemporary West being part of nation is not a consideration permanently at the forefront of most minds. Nonetheless, the powerful attraction of national identity, a prerequisite of nationalism, has survived communism and liberal internationalism. The transition from identification with a nation, to affirmation or endeavours on its behalf, is often imperceptible. While I am chiefly concerned with European examples, all nations pertain to one of political theory's primary concerns: the 'we' factor. How far this 'we', along with its goals, liabilities, loyalties, rights and responsibilities, extends; what restrictions there are on membership; and in what contexts, if any, this 'we' can overlap with others without dissolution, set the parameters for the constituting of a national community.

The substance of a nation is people, but not every person can be part of any nation. Qualifications, which vary as much as there are nations, apply. 'We' are those who, in Michael Ignatieff's terminology, are categorised as 'belonging'.⁵ They' are those who do not—which does not necessarily mean they never can. In spite of its apparent relevance for political theory, Margaret Canovan has argued that the desire to belong, to possess 'nationhood', has, at least since 1945, been as ignored by this discipline as it has been embraced by some others. Behind the propensity to omit or be dismissive of nations, nationhood and nationalism, however, the nation is actually lurking as a 'tacit' assumption. These unacknowledged or phantom nations most closely correspond to that from which, in their individual cases, these theorists hail and/or themselves 'belong'. This is both a ironic form of affinity and ipso facto presumes other nations with other loyalties. Canovan's critique contains a recurring presumption that these theorists who refrain from conscious exploration of nations as political phenomena all possess and extol 'liberal-democratic' values. This point shall be returned to later. I continue in agreement with her claim that—where it is not explicit—the presence of nations and nationhood constitute a 'tacit premise of all contemporary political thinking'.⁶

This assumption also applies in the statecraft of political practitioners be they engaged in the conduct of domestic or foreign policy. Political, economic or historical impulses emitting from two or more national polities are often harmonized; nationalism can be internationalized.⁷ Because notions of bellicosity, isolationism, or aggressive competition are so prominent in, particularly academic, understandings of what nationalism is.⁸ when precisely the same goals of nationalist activity (economic advance, political influence, cultural prestige) are achieved through peaceful means or by more than one nation simultaneously, the motivating force and process itself becomes one of 'international cooperation'. What international organizations often actually facilitate is a camouflaged nationalism. The real test of allegiances, identifications, and perceptions of interests, for politicians and publics, comes in times and events of open discord, when competition for resources intensifies, or when dramatic geo-political developments or pressures for socio-cultural change occur.⁹ Pursuance or implementation of domestic or foreign policies that lead to conflict with another nation-state is then viewed as nationalistic, a'state nationalism'. Such a perspective is especially likely from the dissenting party. However, a response from another which seeks to prevent this and impress its own preference is also nationalistic.

Interpretations of Nations

The variety of nations is matched by a variety of explanations as to their essential characteristics. For Ernst Renan, one of the earliest and still most influential authorities, nations are a category thai in each case requires consensual affirmation—a nation is a nation, because it wants to be.¹⁰ In asserting this Renan elevates the French republican conception over others (allowing that fewer 'certified' nations or types of nations were then in existence). In his famous Sorbonne lecture he attempts to

argue against the coercive limiting vision of the nation, and instead to promote a nation with a voluntary quality at its core. He wants to emphasize the nation's similarity to the individual in its personal history, and right to freedom. Nation's exist, he argued, by consent. Or at least they should.¹¹

Anthony Smith's œmivre is permeated by the themes of nations being based on memory and on ethnicity.¹² He has written of how the ancient past 'serves to 'remake the collective personality' of the nation in each generation'.¹³ This apparently brings him into direct conflict with Renan's assertion that they, or at least the 19th century western nations, were formed through 'forgetting' as a conduit or aftermath to consent. In arriving at this the crystallisation of tribes or smaller communities into a nation involves processes whereby members are influenced by at least some familiarity: understanding, acceptance or expectation of certain expressions and practices.¹⁴ Voluntary commitment is 'meaningless in the absence of certain fundamental commonalities' felt by sufficient numbers of population. Two ingredients are treated differently by Smith and Renan, yet both are indispensable: history and culture. The memories, selective though they may be, and the symbols of a particular history and cultural code make consent and consensus far more likely. Having privileged will and forgetting over such as language, ethnicity, and geography, Renan concludes that a nation is a 'spiritual principle' which is the fusion of 'the common possession of a rich legacy of memories' and 'actual consent, the desire to live together, the will to continue to value the heritage that has been received in common'.¹⁵ Nations are not solely 'political' or 'organic' but a synthesis of both phenomena.

Peter Alter's concept of nation' follows this combination of general similarities and specific differences, which 'represents an interlocking of objective actualities and the circumstance of subjective political will, an everchanging combination whose shape is truly unique to each historical case.'¹⁶ The issue of a broader division of European nations and nationalisms into western ('political') and eastern ('cultural') types¹⁷ takes on a new aspect after the Cold War, not least regarding the categorization of Germany, Such a division reiterates Madame de Staeël's observation of France as a state in search of a nation and Germany as a nation in search of a state. Postulating a dichotomy of Staat and Kultur nations today must contend with a situation whereby France is no less integrated by and proud of its culture than Germany is reliant on the 'state' to maintain social cohesion, public service, or conduct foreign policy. The configuration of political institutions and the specificities of their societies vary but a symbiosis of 'state' and 'cultural' elements is replicated in the two 'nations'.¹⁸ Pure cultural nations do not exist in Europe, but there is, as Brian Singer has recently argued, 'no purely contractual nation' either.¹⁹

According to Liah Greenfeld, the first exemplar was the English.²⁰ After it emerged as a nation in the sixteenth century England became an object of jealousy and something to be emulated. It was an impression of England's now superior prestige that incited 'national feeling' amongst the French ruling strata while an English nationalism based on a broader and more developed identification was on the rise.²¹ It was not until after 1789 that the distinct French model of the republican political nation came into being and this then encountered various revisionist phases and struggles between left and right through the 1800s.²² In functional and ideal terms neither étatism nor gloire were jettisoned, they grew together. Following Napoleon's initial foray, after 1870-71 the French state centralized around Paris embarked on a bureaucratic compression of the population into a common patriotic identity. Contrary to Renan's claim that France 'never sought to obtain linguistic unity by coercive means',²³ political-administrative processes stemming from the Ile-de-France aimed at linguistic uniformity so making Burgundians, Occitans and Franks, 'French',²⁴ Common language joined a defined territory. This distillation survived and evolved through the internal ideological battles of the nineteenth and twentieth century for the nation to become a sine qua non across tte political spectrum. What was to become Germany evolved in the opposite direction, from pre-political cultural affinities, reaching the endpoint of an evolutionary phase and the beginning of another in Bismarck's unification.²⁵ The national liberal perspective elaborated by Friedrich Meinecke was swamped by an imperial authoritarian variant.²⁶

Although considered principally a sociologist and not a specialist in the study of nations, Max Weber provides insights of continuing relevance. What he was investigating and describing, ostensibly as 'societies', were actually 'nations'. In common with Renan he ascribed a 'voluntary quality' to nations. And his 'idea of nation',²⁷ preceded the revelations of later twentieth century writings on the 'imagined' or 'mythical' nature of the nation.²⁸ Weber impressed that "national' affiliation need not be based upon common blood'. 'Nevertheless', he continues, 'the idea of the 'nation' is apt to include the notions of common descent and of an essential, though frequently indefinite, homogeneity'.²⁹ Populations of present-day 'national states'³⁰ are not monopolised by specifically ethnic ties but do dispose of firm congruities. National armies are one multi-ethnic example. And national football teams, the objects of among the most intense identification and support (or dislike), are composed of players often not relat...