Nationalism

Theory, Ideology, History

Anthony D. Smith

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745659671
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

For the last two centuries, nationalism has been a central feature of society and politics. Few ideologies can match its power and resonance, and no other political movement and symbolic language has such worldwide appeal and resilience. But nationalism is also a form of public culture and political religion, which draws on much older cultural and symbolic forms.

Seeking to do justice to these different facets of nationalism, the second edition of this popular and respected overview has been revised and updated with contemporary developments and the latest scholarly work. It aims to provide a concise and accessible introduction to the core concepts and varieties of nationalist ideology; a clear analysis of the major competing paradigms and theories of nations and nationalism; a critical account of the often opposed histories and periodization of the nation and nationalism; and an assessment of the prospects of nationalism and its continued global power and persistence.

Broad and comparative in scope, the book is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on ideas and insights from history, political science, sociology and anthropology. The focus is theoretical, but it also includes a fresh examination of some of the main historical and contemporary empirical contributions to the literature on the subject. It will continue to be an invaluable resource for students of nationalism across the social sciences.

1

Concepts

If there is one point on which there is agreement, it is that the term ‘nationalism’ is quite modern. Its earliest recorded use in anything like a recognizably social and political sense goes back to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and the French counter-revolutionary cleric, the Abbé Augustin de Barruel at the end of the eighteenth century. It was rarely used in the early nineteenth century; in English, its first use, in 1836, appears to be theological, the doctrine that certain nations are divinely elected. Thereafter, it tended to be equated with national egotism, but usually other terms, such as ‘nationality’ and ‘nationalness’, with the meanings of national fervour or national individuality, were preferred.¹

The Meanings of ‘Nationalism’

It was really only during the last century that the term nationalism acquired the range of meanings that we associate with it today. Of these usages, the most important are:

(1) a process of formation, or growth, of nations;

(2) a sentiment or consciousness of belonging to the nation;

(3) a language and symbolism of the nation;

(4) a social and political movement on behalf of the nation;

(5) a doctrine and/or ideology of the nation, both general and particular.

The first of these usages, the process of formation of nations, is very general and itself embraces a series of more specific processes which often form the object of nationalism in other, narrower senses of the term. It is therefore best left for later consideration when we look at the term ‘nation’.

Of the other four usages, the second, national consciousness or sentiment, needs to be carefully distinguished from the other three. They are, of course, closely related, but they do not necessarily go together. One can, for example, possess considerable national feeling in the absence of any symbolism, movement or even ideology on behalf of the nation. This was the predicament in which Niccolo Machiavelli found himself when his calls to Italians in the early sixteenth century to unite against the northern barbarians fell on deaf ears. On the other hand, a group could exhibit a high degree of national consciousness, but lack any overt ideology, let alone a political movement, on behalf of the nation, though it is likely to possess at least some national symbols and myths. The contrast between an organized ideological movement of nationalism, on the one hand, and a more diffuse feeling of national belonging, on the other, is sufficiently clear to allow us to treat the concept of national consciousness or sentiment separately from that of nationalism, even if in practice there is often some degree of overlap between them.²

The term nationalism, therefore, will be understood here as referring to one or more of the last three usages: a language and symbolism, a sociopolitical movement and an ideology of the nation. That each of these nevertheless presupposes some measure of national feeling, certainly among the nationalists themselves, if not the designated population at large, needs to be borne in mind; for it serves to connect the more active and organized sectors to the usually much larger, more passive and fragmented segments of the population.

As a sociopolitical movement, nationalism does not differ, in principle, from others in terms of its organizations, activities and techniques, except in one particular: its emphasis upon cultural gestation and representation. The ideologies of nationalism require an immersion in the culture of the nation – the rediscovery of its history, the revival of its vernacular language through such disciplines as philology and lexicography, the cultivation of its literature, especially drama and poetry, and the restoration of its vernacular arts and crafts, as well as its music, including native dance and folksong. This accounts for the frequent cultural and literary renascences associated with nationalist movements, and the rich variety of the cultural activities which nationalism can excite. Typically, a nationalist movement will commence not with a protest rally, declaration or armed resistance, but with the appearance of literary societies, historical research, music festivals and cultural journals – the kind of activity that Miroslav Hroch analysed as an essential first phase of the rise and spread of Eastern European nationalisms, and, we may add, of many subsequent nationalisms of colonial Africa and Asia. As a result, ‘humanistic’ intellectuals – historians and philologists, artists and composers, poets, novelists and film directors – tend to be disproportionately represented in nationalist movements and revivals (Argyle 1969; Hroch 1985).³

The language and symbolism of nationalism merit more attention, and their motifs will recur throughout these pages. But, despite considerable overlap with symbolism, the language or discourse of nationalism cannot be considered separately, since they are so closely tied to the ideologies of nationalism. Indeed, the key concepts of nationalism’s distinctive language form intrinsic components of its core doctrine and its characteristic ideologies. I shall therefore consider this conceptual language under the heading of ideology in chapter 2.⁴

The symbolism of nationalism, on the other hand, shows such a degree of regularity across the globe that we may profitably extract it from its ideological framework. A national symbolism is, of course, distinguished by its all-encompassing object, the nation, but equally by the tangibility and vividness of its characteristic signs. These start with a collective proper name. For nationalists, as for the feuding families of Verona, a rose by any other name could never smell as sweet – as the recent dispute over the name of Macedonia sharply reminded us. Proper names are chosen, or retained from the past, to express the nation’s distinctiveness, heroism and sense of destiny, and to resonate these qualities among the members. Similarly with national flags and anthems. Their colours, shapes and patterns – like those of the old Danish cross or the Revolutionary French tricolor – and their verses and music – as in the British ‘God Save the King’ or the French Marseillaise – epitomize the special qualities of the nation and by their simple forms and rhythms aim to conjure a vivid sense of unique history and/or destiny among the designated population (Billig 1995; Elgenius 2005). It matters little that to outsiders the differences between many flags appear minimal, and that the verses of anthems reveal a limited range of themes. What counts is the potency of the meanings conveyed by such signs to the members of the nation. The fact that every nation sports a capital city, a national assembly, a national coinage, passports and frontiers, similar remembrance ceremonies for the fallen in battle, the requisite military parades and national oaths, as well as their own national academies of music, art and science, national museums and libraries, national monuments and war memorials, festivals and holidays, etc., and that lack of such symbols marks a grave national deficit, suggests that the symbolism of the nation has assumed a life of its own, one that is based on global comparisons and a drive for national salience and parity in a visual and semantic ‘world of nations’. The panoply of national symbols only serves to express, represent and reinforce the boundary definition of the nation, and to unite the members inside through a common imagery of shared memories, myths and values.⁵

Of course, national symbolism, like nationalist movements, cannot be divorced from the ideology of nationalism, the final and main usage of the term. The ideology of nationalism serves to give force and direction to both symbols and movements. The goals of the sociopolitical movement are defined not by the activities or the personnel of the movement, but by the basic ideals and tenets of the ideology. Similarly, the characteristic symbols and language of nationalism are shaped by the role they play in explicating and evoking the ideals of the nation and furthering the goals laid down by nationalist ideology. So, it is the ideology that must supply us with an initial working definition of the term ‘nationalism’, for its contents are defined by the ideologies which place the nation at the centre of their concerns and purposes, and which separate it from other, adjacent ideologies (see Motyl 1999: ch. 5).

Definitions

Nationalism

The ideology of nationalism has been defined in many ways, but most of the definitions overlap and reveal common themes. The main theme, of course, is an overriding concern with the nation. Nationalism is an ideology that places the nation at the centre of its concerns and seeks to promote its well-being. But this is rather vague. We need to go further and isolate the main goals under whose headings nationalism seeks to promote the nation’s well-being. These generic goals are three: national autonomy, national unity and national identity, and, for nationalists, a nation cannot survive without a sufficient degree of all three. This suggests the following working definition of nationalism: ‘An ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity for a population which some of its members deem to constitute an actual or potential “nation”.’

This is a working definition based on the common elements of the ideals of self-styled nationalists, and it is therefore inductive in character. But it inevitably simplifies and extracts from the many variations in the ideals of nationalists, and assumes thereby something of a general, ideal-typical character. This definition ties the ideology to a goal-oriented movement, since as an ideology, nationalism prescribes certain kinds of action. Nevertheless, it is the core concepts of the ideology that define the goals of the movement and thereby differentiate it from other kinds of movement.

However, the close link between ideology and movement in no way limits the concept of nationalism only to movements seeking independence. The words ‘and maintaining’ in the definition recognize the continuing influence of nationalism in long-established, or in recently, independent nations. This is important when it comes to analysing, as John Breuilly has done, the ‘renewal nationalisms’ of national states and their governments (Breuilly 1993).

The definition I am proposing presupposes a concept of the ‘nation’, but it does not suggest that nations exist prior to ‘their’ nationalisms. The words ‘or potential “nation” ’ recognize the many situations in which a small minority of nationalists who possess a general concept of the abstract ‘nation’ seek to create particular nations ‘on the ground’. We often find nationalisms without nations – their nations – especially in the postcolonial states of Africa and Asia, like Nigeria, Tanzania and Indonesia. Such nationalisms are not limited to the attaining of independence, or more generally, to political goals. They cover, as we shall see, important areas of culture and society; the ideal of national identity, in particular, relates to cultural issues that other ideologies neglect – and every nationalism pursues the goal of national identity in varying degrees. But, always, they come back to the ideal of the nation.⁶

Ethnie and nation

How then shall we define the concept of the ‘nation’? This is undoubtedly the most problematic and contentious term in the field. There are some who would dispense with it altogether. Charles Tilly described it as ‘one of the most puzzling and tendentious items in the political lexicon’ (1975: 6), and preferred to concentrate on the state – a concept not without its problems, either. More recently, Rogers Brubaker has warned us of the dangers of reifying the concept of the nation, by seeing nations as ‘substantial, enduring collectivities’. We should, he argues, rather ‘think about nationalism without nations’, and see ‘nation as a category of practice, nationhood as an institutionalised cultural and political form, and nationness as a contingent event or happening’ (1996: 21). Here Brubaker cites the example of the national republics of the Soviet Union as creations of nationalist design by political elites. Calhoun, too, operates with a concept of nationalism as a discursive formation, though for him the resulting nations are important in their own right (Calhoun 1997 and 2006).

There are two kinds of answer to such misgivings. The first operates within the circle of nationalist ideology. On this reading, nationalism highlights the popular sentiments evoked by the idea of the nation; in this ideological discourse, the nation is a felt and lived community, a category of behaviour as much as imagination, and it is one that requires of the members certain kinds of action. Typically, nationalist activities include the study of ethnic history and philology, archaeological excavations of historic national sites, the erection of buildings and structures, and the holding of national games and sports. And, in all societies, nationalism has encouraged the proliferation of commemorative rites and ceremonies, especially for those who fell in battle on behalf of their nation, as well as those who brought great victories. Hence, its ‘substance’ and ‘endurance’, as in other kinds of community, reside in its repeated consequences, and the analyst has to take account of this felt reality through a separate concept of the nation, without seeking to reify it.⁷

The second answer touches on a wider problem. If the concept of the nation predated the ideology of nationalism, then we can no longer characterize it simply as a category of nationalist practice. If, further, we can envisage even a few premodern nations before the advent of nationalist ideologies in the late eighteenth century, then we shall need a definition of the concept of the nation which is independent of the ideology of nationalism, but is nevertheless consonant with it. Here lies the greatest problem, and the most insuperable divide, in the study of nationalism.⁸

Definitions of the concept of the nation range from those that stress ‘objective’ factors, such as language, religion and customs, territory and institutions, to those that emphasize purely ‘subjective’ factors, such as attitudes, perceptions and sentiments. An example that stresses ‘objective’ factors comes from Joseph Stalin: ‘A nation is an historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture’ (1973: 61). An example of a more ‘subjective’ definition of the nation comes from Benedict Anderson: ‘it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’ (1991: 6).

These definitions undoubtedly isolate important features of the concept of the nation, yet objections can be made to both. Insofar as the ‘objective’ definitions are stipulative, they nearly always exclude some widely accepted cases of nations, sometimes quite intentionally. As Max Weber (1948) showed, purely ‘objective’ criteria of the nation – language, religion, territory and so on – always fail to include some nations. Conversely, ‘subjective’ definitions generally take in too large a catch of cases. Emphasizing sentiment, will, imagination and perception as criteria of the nation and national belonging makes it difficult to separate out nations from other kinds of collectivity such as regions, tribes, city-states and empires, which attract similar subjective attachments.⁹

The solution generally adopted has been to choose criteria which span the ‘objective–subjective’ spectrum. This strategy has yielded many interesting and useful definitions, but no scholarly consensus. Most students of the subject have, nevertheless, agreed on two points: a nation is not a state and it is not an ethnic community.

It is not a state, because the concept of the state relates to institutional activity, while that of the nation denotes a type of community. The concept of the state can be defined as a set of autonomous institutions, differentiated from other institutions, possessing a legitimate monopoly of coercion and ...