The Idea of Nationalism

A Study in Its Origins and Background

Hans Kohn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351481236
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this sixtieth anniversary edition of The Idea of Nationalism, Craig Calhoun probes the work of Hans Kohn and the world that first brought prominence to this unparalleled defense of the national ideal in the modern West. At its publication, Saturday Review called it an enduring and definitive treatise.... [Kohn] has written a book which is less a history of nationalism than it is a history of Western civilization from the standpoint of the national idea. This edition includes an extensive new introduction by Craig Calhoun, which in itself is a substantial contribution to the history of ideas. The Idea of Nationalism comprehensively analyzes the rise of nationalism, the idea's content, and its worldwide implications from the days of Hebrew and Greek antiquity to the eve of the French Revolution. As Calhoun explains, Kohn was particularly qualified to undertake this study. He grew up in Prague, the vigorous heart of Czech nationalism, participated in the Zionist student movement, studied the question of nationality in multinational cultures, spent the World War One years in Asian Russia, and later traveled extensively in the Near East studying the nationalist movements of western and southern Asia. The work itself is the product of Kohn's later years at Harvard University. In The Idea of Nationalism, Kohn presents the single most influential articulation of the distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism. This has shaped nearly all ensuing research and public discussion and deeply informed parallel oppositions of early and late, Western and Eastern varieties of nationalism. Kohn also argues that the age of nationalism represents the first period of universal history. Civilizations and continents are brought into ever closer contact; popular participation in politics is enormously increased; and the secular state is ever more significant.The Idea of Nationalism is important both in itself and because it so deeply sha

Notes

Notes to Chapter One

1. Most historians are agreed upon a modern origin of nationalism: “Nationalism is a child of the French Revolution” (G. P. Gooch, Studies in Modern History, London: Longmans, 1931, p. 117); “Nationalism is modern, very modern” (Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism, New York: Macmillan, 1926, p. 29 and passim). See also Halvdan Koht, “L’Esprit national et l’idée de la souveraineté du peuple,” in Bulletin of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, vol. II, part II, pp. 217-224; Sydney Herbert, Nationality and Its Problems (London: Methuen, 1920) ; Waldemar Mitscherlich, Der Nationalismus Westeuropas (Leipzig: C. L. Hirschfeld, 1920); Kurt Stavenhagen, Kritische Gänge in die Volkstheorie (Abhandlungen der Herder Gesellschaft und des Herder Instituts, Band V), (Riga: Ernst Plates., 1936); H. A. L. Fisher, The Common Weal (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), p. 19;; Friedrich Meinecke, Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat, 3rd ed. (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1915), pp. 5 f.; James Bryce, Studies in History and Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), vol. I, p. 268.

The concern with nationalism in old times is a product of the years, when nationalism dominating all our thought makes us see nationalism everywhere. Prof. M. T. Walek-Czernecki (“Le Rôle de la nationalité dans l’histoire de l’antiquité,” Bulletin of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, vol. II, part II, pp. 303-320) upholds against Eduard Meyer who believed that in ancient times only the Jews, the Iranians, and the Greeks had arrived at fuli development of nationality that Greeks and Romans never developed a real nationalism, whereas Babylonians, Egyptians, and other Orientals developed a full-fledged nationalism.

2. John Oakesmith calls nationalism “what the vast majority of civilized people feel to be the most sacred and dominating inspiration in life,” and “the most pregnant fact of modern political evolution” (Race and Nationality. An¹ nquiry into the Origin and Growth of Patriotism, New York: Stokes, 1919, pp. viii f.). His definition of nationalism is valid only for the period since the French Revolution. Then, and only then, did nationalism become the inspiration of “civilized people.” We may even say that a people enters the orbit of “modem” civilization when it becomes imbued with the spirit of nationalism. The Chinese were civilized before they, in their vast majority, developed a national feeling in the twentieth century, when they entered “modern” civilization. Nationalism is coextensive with “modem” civilization not, of course, with civilization generally.

3. See Ignaz Seipel, Nation und Staat (Vienna: Braumüller, 1916). Aristotle understood by state or fatherland something which could be felt easily as a reality in everyday concrete contacts. A state should consist of no fewer than ten and no more than ten thousand inhabitants (Ethics, IX, 10, 3). The great barbarian empires were for him no real states (Politics, VII, 4).

4. Robert Michels (Der Patriotismus : Prolegomena zu seiner soziologischen Analyse, Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1929, p. 88) remarks that the Fernstenliebe extends from patriotism to internationalism. “Denn Patriotismus und Internationalismus haben das Merkmal physischer Kontaktlosigkeit der sie Empfindenden zu den Mitempfindenden gemeinsam.” Both are the product of an historical development and of an indoctrination by education. The historical character of patriotism was well recognized by William Hazlitt (“On Patriotism: A Fragment,” written Jan. 5, 1814. Collected Works, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, London: Dent, 1902, vol. I, p. 67) : “Patriotism, in modern times, and in great states, is and must be the creature of reason and reflection, rather than the offspring of physical or local attachment. . . . Patriotism is not, in a strict or exclusive sense, a natural or personal affection, but a law of our rational and moral nature, strengthened and determined by particular circumstances and associations, but not born of them, nor wholly nourished by them. It is not possible that we should have an individual attachment to sixteen millions of men, any more than to sixty millions. We cannot be habitually attached to places we never saw and people we never heard cf. Is not the name of Englishman a general term, as well as that of man? How many varieties does it not combine within it?”

5. Letters Concerning the English Nation (London, 1773), Letter VIII, p. 55.

6. Henry Morley, English Writers (New York: Cassell, 1887), vol. I, p. 1; J. M. Robertson, The Evolution of States-. An Introduction to English Politics (London: Watts, 1912), p. 285; Sir Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development, (Everyman’s Library, New York: Dutton, 1908), p. 128. Nationalism itself, the will of forming, or belonging to, a nationality, acts as a factor in building a national character. That is clearly seen in the process of Americanization, of the immigrants adopting in the second or third generation entirely new attitudes and characters. Here as elsewhere in history and social life we find a constant mutual interaction of cause and effect. Psychology of nationalities was developed by Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft (i8doff.). They considered the group mind as an integration of the individual minds functioning as a unit. See also Alfred Fouillé, Esquisse phychologique des peuples européens (Paris: Alcan, 1902); Wilhelm Wundt, Die Nationen und ihre Philosophie (Leipzig: Kroner, 1915) (his ten volumes on Völkerpsychologie are rather a study on ethnography) ; Eduard Wechssler, Esprit und Geist: Versuch einer Wesenskunde des Deutschen und des Franzosen (Bielefeld: Velhagen & Klasing, 1927); Michael Demiashkevich, The National Mind: English, French, German (New York: American Book Co., 1938); Elias Hurwicz, Die Seelen der Völker (Gotha: Perthes, 1920).

7. W. B. Pillsbury, The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism (New York: Appleton, 1919), p. 5. See on p. 267, “Nationality is an affair of the mind or spirit, not ... of physical relationship. The only way to decide whether an individual belongs to one nation rather than another is to ask him.”

8. Sociological definitions view nationality primarily as a conflict group. See Max Sylvius Handman, “The Sentiments of Nationalism,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. XXXVI, pp. 104-121, and Louis Wirth, “Types of Nationalism,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. XLI, pp. 723-737. A typology according to historical elements in C. J. H. Hayes, “Two Varieties of Nationalism, Original and Derived,” Proceedings of the Association of History Teachers of the Middle States and Maryland, No. XXVI (1928), pp. 71-83; and in my Revolutions and Dictatorships (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1939), pp. 68-82, and Not by Arms Alone (Harvard Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 103-124.

9. The word “nationality” is preferable to “nation,” as the latter term frequently denotes “state” in French and English. In the later Middle Ages the word “nation” often had no political content whatsoever. The Romans never designated themselves as a natio but as a popidtis. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries “nation” was opposed frequently to “people” (peuple). It indicated the conscious and active part of the people, whereas “people” denoted the politically and socially more passive masses. In a similar way the word Volk was used in German, where Romanticism with its stress upon the irrational and subconscious brought about a curious revaluation. Nationalism brought the integration of the people into the nation, the awakening of the masses to political and social activism. The revolutions of the eighteenth century accomplished in the West this integration of the people, and “nation” came generally to mean the whole political organization or state; this identification is often inapplicable to the more complex situation in Central and Eastern Europe. See Friedrich Julius Neumann, Volk und Nation (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1888); Josef Fels, Begriff und Wesen der Nation: Eine soziologische Untersuchung und Kritik (Münster: Aschendorff, 1927); Heinz O. Ziegler, Die moderne Nation-, Ein Beitrag zur politischen Soziologie (Tübingen: Mohr, 1931); Friedrich Hertz, “Wesen und Werden der Nation,” Nation und Nationalität (Jahrbuch für Soziologie, ist supplementary vol.), (Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1927); Alfred Amonn, Nationalgefühl und Staatsgefühl (Munich: Duncker & Humblot, 1915).

10. The racial theory has found its strongest expression in Germany. Its triumph was foreseen by a French author when he wrote, “Un mot résume cette retombée incessante, dont la pensée allemande ne pourra même jamais avoir l’idée de se libérer, un mot qui exprime tous les aspects de cette impuissance créatrice, c’est la Leiblichkeit, cette affirmation massive du corps et du terrestre, cette primauté des sens et de l’énergie musculaire, cette préférence quand même pour la force qui se fait sentir. . . . Plus ou moins, il [l’Allemand] réduira la conception et la portée des droits plus vastes à l’image et à la formule des réalités dont il profite, et, avec plus de ténacité que les autres groupes humains, continuera à se figurer la nation d’après le type naturel et sensible de la famille. Les liens du sang seront seuls pour lui comprehensible et, vrais ou faux, primeront tout. L’égoisme, inné dans tous les hommes et dans toutes les réunions humaines, revêtira chez l’Allemand comme dans les nations allemandes, un aspect auguste, terrible, quasi-religieux.” René Johannet, Le principe des nationalités, new ed. (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1923), pp. 187 f. See also Eric Voegelin, “The Growth of the Race Idea,” Review of Politics, July, 1940, pp. 283-317.

11. The importance of language was stressed by Georg Schmidt-Rohr, Die Sprache als Bildnerin der Völker (Jena: Diederichs, 1932). According to him the community of language is the real national community. The second printing in 1933 had the changed title Muttersprache: Vom Amt der Sprache bei der Volkswerdung, and a foreword apologizing for a theory in contradiction with the then ruling racial theory.

12. An example of the insufficiency of objective characteristics for the determination of one’s nationality, including language, in C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), pp. 8 f. See also Hans Rothfels, Ostraum, Preussentmn und Reichsgedanke (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1935), p. 193. Nationality in Eastern Europe “ist nicht nur eine Angelegenheit des Blutes, sondern des geschichtlich-kulturellen Zusammenhangs.”

13. Ernest Renan’s definition in his address Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1882), p. 27, is famous: “Une nation est une grande solidarité constituée par le sentiment des sacrifices qu’on a faits et de ceux qu’on est disposé à faire encore. Elle suppose un passé, elle se résume pourtant dans le présent par un fait tangible: le consentiment, le désir clairement exprimé de continuer la vie commune. L’existence d’une nation est un plébiscite de tous les jours.” By this definition Renan supported the claim of the two lost provinces to decide their allegiance of their own free will. The great importance which Renan himself attached to this speech can be seen from the preface to his Discours et Conférences (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, i887): “Le morceau de ce volume auquel j’attache le plus d’importance, est la conférence Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? . . . C’est ma profession de foi en ce qui touche les choses humaines, et, quand la civilisation moderne aura sombré par suite de l’équivoque funeste de ces mots: nation, nationalité, race, je désire qu’on se souvienne de ces vingt pages là.”

The German point of view was expressed equally authoritatively by Heinrich von Treitschke: “Who in the face of this duty to secure the peace of the world, still dares to raise the objection that the people of Alsace and Lorraine have no wish to belong to Germany? Before the sacred obligation of these great days, the theory of the right to se...