Nationalism

A Religion

Frans A.M. Alting von Geusau, Frans A.M. Alting von Geusau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351503648
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This classic volume tells the story of nationalism, the fusion of patriotism with ethnic consciousness. It documents the emergence of nationalism in the modern world and the way that nationalism has become a substitute for religion over the past two centuries. Nationalism, for Hayes, draws its power from cultural and social factors, primarily language. Second to language are historical forces that stem from an accumulation of a people's remembered or imagined experiences.Hayes bases his observations on historic European examples. He sees nationalism as a religion, reacting against historic Christianity and the values of the Western tradition. This combination of powerful forces stresses neither charity nor the brotherhood of man. Historically it has rationalized selfishness, intolerance, and violence. The growth of nationalism, Hayes observed, brings not peace but war.As a testament to its timeless insight, Nationalism remains an informative guide despite the failure of globalization, the Internet, and international communications and connectivity to move us beyond the bonds of nationalism. Hayes's linking of the potent forces of nationalism and religion still rings true: the insurgency in Ukraine, the unrest in the Middle East, and tribal conflicts in Africa are all undergirded by nationalist sentiments.

1
What Nationalism Is

1. Bases of Nationality: Language and Traditions

Nationalism is an obvious and impelling movement in the modern and contemporary world. It is so obvious, indeed, and so frequently mentioned in the news, that it is apt to be taken for granted, like the rising and setting of the sun, and its importance overlooked.

Nationalism, as we know it, is a modern development. It has had its origin and rise in Europe, and through European influence and example it has been implanted in America and all other areas of Western civilization. But it is now no longer peculiar to the Christian West.

It has recently become an outstanding feature of states and peoples throughout the vast expanses of Asia and Africa, amid the traditional civilizations of Muslim, Hindu, Confucian, and Buddhist. It is especially evidenced across the whole breadth of the Muslim world: in the Turkey of Atatürk, in the Iran of Riza Pahlevi, in the Egypt of Nasser, in the separation of Pakistan from India, in the successful revolt of Indonesia against the Dutch, in the recently won independence of Libya, the Sudan, Somalia, Tunis, and Morocco, and in the Algerian rebellion. It is basic to the conflict between Arabs and Israelis.

Moreover, to a fully developed nationalism in Japan have now been added the nascent and militant nationalisms of India, Burma, Ceylon, Malaya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and, most recently, of colored peoples almost everywhere in Africa. In its latest stage, nationalism is proving the dissolvent of oversea colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and probably too, before long, that of Portugal. And we should not overlook the fact that nationalism, as well as communism, is a mark of contemporary Russia and China.

What actually is this nationalism which is now so universal? It may best be understood, I think, by concentrating attention on Europe, and at first on western Europe. For here is its original home; here, its roots demonstrably reach far back into the past; and here, for at least five centuries, it has been an increasingly important factor in the evolution of our historic civilization.

In simplest terms, nationalism may be defined as a fusion of patriotism with a consciousness of nationality. For proper understanding of the matter, both nationality and patriotism require some explanation.

For centuries and for millenniums—as far back as we have any historical knowledge—the world has contained a large number of different nationalities. In Europe, the smallest of the five major continents, there has long been a variety of diverse nationalities: Greek, Latin, Celtic, German, Baltic, Slavic, Magyar, and so forth, some thirty-three at least at the present time.

Now what is a nationality? The word derives from the Latin natio, implying a common racial descent, but few, if any, modern nationalities consist of a distinctive “race” in the biological sense. Frenchmen are a nationality compounded of such different types as Mediterranean, Nordic, and Alpine. Germans include long-headed blonds and roundheaded brunets. Italians represent curious mixtures of Etruscans, Phœnicians, and primitive Celts, of Saracens, Goths, and Norsemen. And in the United States Negroes belong, not to any African nationality, but, along with whites and red men, to the American nationality. Every nationality of which I have knowledge has been, or is, biologically and racially, a melting pot.

Nor is nationality determined simply by physical geography. To be sure, certain cultural features of Arctic peoples are bound to differ from those of tropical peoples, and both from life in temperate zones. For geographical reasons Czechs can hardly be expected to become a seafaring nationality, or the English not to become such. Yet, something other than geography has to explain why Englishmen from their island built up in modern times a great navy and merchant marine, while Irishmen from their adjacent island didn’t. Or why similar habitats, climates, and pursuits failed to weld Frenchmen and Germans into a single nationality. Or why mountainous ruggedness of Scotland and Switzerland is supposed to explain the proverbial thriftiness of their inhabitants, but fails utterly to do so in the case of Dutchmen or of the French peasantry.

No, a nationality receives its impress, its character, its individuality, not, unless very incidentally, from physical geography or biological race, but rather from cultural and historical forces. First and foremost among these I would put language.

Language is peculiarly human, and at least ever since the legendary Tower of Babel there has been a wide, fluid, and baffling variety of languages. Anthropologists have shown that primitive tribes are marked off from one another by differences of speech. And alike to scholars and laymen it should he obvious that language is the surest badge of nationality. It is the one thing which all persons of a particular country have in common, whether they be rich or poor, good or bad, intelligent or stupid; and it is the one thing which distinguishes them from all other persons. It is common, for example, to all Germans, whether they be long-headed or round-headed, whether they live on the Alpine heights of the Tyrol or at sea level in Hamburg; and it differentiates them from all Frenchmen, including those who may be just like Germans in race and habitat.

Likewise, language is a tangible tie between the present generation of a nation and preceding generations. The English language ties the subjects of Elizabeth II with those of Elizabeth I, and Americans of the twentieth century with those of the seventeenth and eighteenth. Similarly the German language joins people who heard Martin Luther with those who have more recently listened to Adolf Hitler and now hear Konrad Adenauer. Of every nationality, language bespeaks both the solidarity and the continuity of a people. And national literature, in its many forms of prose and poetry, history, and romance, does much to emphasize what is supposedly peculiar to a nationality rather than what is fundamentally common to mankind.¹

Along with language, and a close second to it in importance in constituting a nationality and distinguishing it from others, are historical traditions. These comprise an accumulation of remembered or imagined experiences of the past, an accumulation differing in content and emphasis from one linguistic group to another.

There are several kinds of historical tradition and background. There is (a) a people’s religious past, whether, for instance, it was traditionally Christian, and if so whether Catholic like Italy or Spain, or Protestant like Sweden, or Eastern Orthodox like Greece or Russia, or divided between different forms of religion, like Germany and the United States. Religious traditions, it should be stressed, have been very important in shaping human culture, not merely by providing certain beliefs, but by establishing and maintaining particular social mores, observances, and habits, and by influencing literature and law.

There is also (b) a people’s territorial past, its ancestral soil, involving a popular, sentimental regard for a homeland where one’s forebears lived and are buried, a homeland that, though perhaps now fallen somewhat from a once high estate, still evokes memory and emulation of past greatness and glory. I need only mention, by way of illustration, the appeal of Jerusalem and Palestine to Jews, the “auld sod” to Irish, the Hellenic lands and isles to Greeks.

Then there is (c) a people’s political past, whether their nation was detached from a big empire or expanded from a tribal state, whether it dominated other peoples or was long subject to alien rule, what government it has traditionally had—monarchical or republican, absolutist or constitutional, or democratic. There is (d) a people’s fighting past, its exploits of valor and prowess, whether chiefly by land or by sea, whether victorious or vanquished. A people may be more united and nationalistic through grief over defeat than through celebration of triumph. Serbs for centuries have recalled in glowing verse and fireside folk tales their valorous but disastrous defeat by the Turks at Kossovo in 1389. The epic fate of the “Invincible Armada” in 1588 stirred and spurred vanquished Spain scarcely less than victorious England.

There is, besides, (e) a people’s industrial and economic past, whether it has been more or less advanced—“progressive” or “backward,” to use a contemporary dichotomy—in agriculture, or trade, or manufacturing, or in all three, or has been famous for some specialized industry, and whether, too, it has had greater or less class wealth and distinctions. Lastly we may mention (f) a people’s cultural past, what distinctive and distinguished literature and architecture and pictorial arts and music it has produced, and what scholarship and learning and degree of popular literacy.

2. Fluidity and Complexity of Nationality

All the foregoing and similar historical traditions are matters of culture, and so is language. Together, they constitute the cultural bases of nationality. Hence I would define nationality as “a cultural group of people who speak a common language (or closely related dialects) and who possess a community of historical traditions (religious, territorial, political, military, economic, artistic, and intellectual).” When such a group—such a nationality—cherishes in marked degree, and extols, its common language and traditions, the result is cultural nationalism.

Cultural nationalism may exist with or without political nationalism. For nationalities can and do exist for fairly long periods without political unity and independence. A notable example has been the Jewish or Israeli nationality; and scarcely less notable have been the Gaelic or Irish, the Polish, and the several Balkan nationalities. A nationality may be partitioned among two or more states, like the German or the Italian or the Basque, or it may be incorporated with others in a single state, like Switzerland or Belgium. Switzerland includes portions of three nationalities: German, French, and Italian. Belgium contains parts of two: French and Dutch-Flemish. If we are to grasp what a nationality is, we must avoid confusing it with state or nation. There is a Swiss state and nation, but, strictly speaking, no Swiss nationality. In like manner, there is a Belgian state and nation, but not a Belgian nationality.

The tendency has been, of course, for cultural nationalism to lead to political nationalism, and for each nationality to strive to establish an independent national state of its own. Yet, even in Europe, this goal has not yet been completely achieved. Countries which are usually thought of as possessing long-established national states, such as Great Britain, France, and Spain, still harbor national minorities with dissident languages and traditions. Besides Englishmen, Britain has Scots, Welsh, and some Irish. Besides Frenchmen, France has Provençals, Bretons, and Flemings. Besides Castilians, Spain has Catalans, Basques, and Portuguese-Galicians.

We should recognize, moreover, the fluidity of nationalities in the long run of history, and the existence of what may be called “subnationalities” or “secondary nationalities.” Nationality has always existed throughout human history, just as there has always been differentiated human culture with variety of languages and customs and traditions. But specific nationalities have appeared and disappeared, risen and fallen. We know that in antiquity there were Hittite and Phœnician and Etruscan nationalities, Elamite and Edomite nationalities, but where are they now? They are gone, quite swallowed up long ago; only their names and some of their monuments remain. On the other hand, when they throve, where then were the French and English nationalities? These were nonexistent; their distinctive languages were not formed in antiquity, but only in the Middle Ages.

Since the sixteenth century, members of European nationalities have migrated overseas, carrying with them their languages and traditional culture. Thus the American continents were partitioned among Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English nationalities, and South Africa became the home of a segment of the Dutch nationality. All this developed when America and South Africa—to say nothing of Australasia and the Philippines—were far more remote from Europe than they are today. Then there were only sailing vessels and no cables or radio or airplanes. The remoteness of the oversea settlers from Europe and the novel frontier life they led, coping with strange lands and strange peoples, gradually served to qualify and add to the historical traditions which they had originally brought with them from the mother country.

Eventually, as we know, the widening differences were accentuated by the forceful revolutionary breaking of political ties, so that in the Americas an independent United States of English-speaking people emerged, and likewise a group of independent republics of Spanish-speaking peoples, an independent Portuguese-speaking Brazil, and an independent Haiti and autonomous Quebec of French-speaking peoples, while in South Africa the Dutch acquired practical independence. And political independence, it is hardly necessary to point out, has operated to provide the new nations with special historical traditions at variance not only with one another’s but those of parental or primary nationalities in Europe.

Wherefore the nationalities in America—English, Spanish, Portuguese, French—may conveniently be described as secondary, or sub-nationalities. They have the same languages as their counterparts in Europe, with only dialect differences; but they possess and cherish divergent historical traditions, and a firm will to maintain free and sovereign national states. Special bonds of culture and sympathy survive, of course, between secondary nationalities and their respective primary nationalities. Common language means that Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats are as much a heritage of the people of the United States as of England, and, vice versa, that modern American novels find a large market among Englishmen. It also helps to explain why for almost a century and a half there has been no war between Britain and the United States, why, rather, they have fought side by side in the World Wars of the present century, and are likely to stand together in “cold” or “hot” wars of the future. Likewise, common language, with common literature and customs, contributes to a continuing sympathetic feeling between European Spaniards on the one hand and Spanish Americans and Filipinos on the other, and between Portuguese and Brazilians; and this despite marked racial differences.

The Dominion of Canada contains two secondary nationalities: French Canadian, and English-speaking Canadian; and the latter may conceivably consist of such “tertiary” nationalities as British Canadian and Irish Canadian, for example. Among other self-governing members of the British Commonwealth, Australia and New Zealand have come to comprise a secondary nationality each, while the Union of South Africa includes at least three: Dutch, English, and indigenous Negro.

Further illustrative of the fluidity and complexity of nationality, is the existence of sectionalism, with its tendency to create and preserve separatist variations of dialect and historic tradition and to threaten the unity of a people. In the United States we have had a glaring spectacle of sectionalism and of its issue, a century ago, in a long bloody struggle to break an American “secondary” nationality into two:² a Northern States’ and a Southern States’; and though political union was preserved and fortified, we all know that a kind of peculiar and “tertiary” American nationality has survived to this day in Dixie.

Furthermore, we should remark here that nationalism as an exalting of nationality is somewhat more artificially stimulated, though no less potent, in a country like the United States than in a European country such as England or France or Sweden or Germany. It is naturally so. In Europe everyone is aware of belonging to a particular nationality with distinguishing language and traditions; and one’s nationalism is a relatively normal outgrowth and expression of it. In the United States, on the other hand, where the population consists of descendants of immigrants from a great variety of European nationalities, to say nothing of Negroes and Asiatics and indigenous Indian tribesmen, nationalism is invoked and pressed into service...