The God of Modernity

The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe

Josep R. Llobera

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000189513
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an integrated framework for explaining how nationalism has become one of the most powerful ideologies of modern times. Starting with a consideration of the medieval roots of the nation, the author goes on to examine the various approaches and structural theories which have been used to explain the development of nationalism. In so doing, he highlights the key role of cultural and political influences, as well as the impact of the French Revolution and its aftermath. Clearly written with concise, self-contained chapters, this book will be of interest to undergraduates taking a range of social science and history courses as well as specialist readers.

Part I
The Nation: A Medieval Heritage

1
Prelude to Nationhood

Basic Concepts

The idea of the nation as a medieval heritage is used here to indicate a variety of historical elements, cultural and political, which combined over the medieval millennium to leave an imprint, albeit at times an unconscious one, on the collective mentality of the different western European peoples. The locution also assumes that this combination of elements crystallised into what we can call a nation, and that if the sentiment of nationhood may in future time have become dormant (because it was absorbed by an alien state), it could always be awakened in modern times by a variety of cultural and political means.

One of the problems of the modernist conception is precisely that it projects an image of the nation as if it were a reality created ex nihilo. This is only acceptable if we take the nation to be a political invention of the modern period - The Enlightenment - and coming into being after the watershed of the French Revolution; in other words, if in the definition of the nation the main emphasis is placed on the idea of popular sovereignty. But we know only too well that the moment we try to operate within this perspective we are blotting out the cultural dimension of the nation and its historicity. To say, then, that nation and nationalism as we understand them today, did not exist in the Middle Ages is mere truism. To abandon for this reason any search into the process of national formation and into the forms of national identity in this period is a recipe for sociological disaster. No doubt what contributed to the triumph of the modernist conception of the nation is the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the consolidation of absolute monarchy blurred the powerful national forces that were emerging by the end of the Middle Ages.

If the nation is, as I have insisted in the Preface, a product of the longue durée, we must probe the medieval structures for an answer to the question of how nations were formed. Without travelling all the way along the slippery path of the Hegelian-Marxist idea of 'historyless peoples', there is much to be said about the importance of having constituted a more or less independent, clearly differentiated polity in the Middle Ages: not because of the prestige that might be associated with that polity, but because of the better chances that a growing state bureaucracy, and the literati attached to the state, might have preserved, in a written form, the events and practices of a given time. It will be pointed out rightly that in many cases what obtains in such records is a narrow dynastic perspective, but in fact there are enough side references to the formation of the nation to make this information extremely valuable. In the Middle Ages, as well as in modern times, language is often, though not always, one of the key historical markers of nationhood. Of course, in the medieval period natio and lingua, to use Latin terms uncontaminated by modernity, were frequently coterminous, as St. Thomas Aquinas forcefully remarked. A written literary language obviously had better chances not only of survival, but also of transmitting culture in a more homogeneous manner and, compared with Latin, it was likely to reach a wider circle of people, even if, given the high levels of illiteracy, the numbers affected would still be rather small.

The ways in which societies organize their lives, from the material to the spiritual realms, are distinctive enough to constitute them into different, separate cultures. There are other facets, however, which may be less visible or forceful, but which are still worth mentioning in the process of the shaping of the medieval nation: territorial frontiers, legitimising myths of descent, concepts of biological kinship (race), symbols of collective identity (flags, shields, shrines, etc.), memories of war, names of the country, etc. All these elements point to the existence of a sense of national awareness, although surely this was not a generalized sentiment except in very rare and ephemerous circumstances. In the changing political world of the Middle Ages, where dynasties and territorial principalities rose and fell, where states absorbed other states through war, marriage alliances, manipulation of feudal law and chicanery, incorporation into a wider political unit did not necessarily mean the end of national identities, though, as we shall see, some national identities survived better than others into modern times.

We are so accustomed to seeing the Middle Ages as a long dismal period preceded and followed by eras of high civilizational attainments, that any attempt to suggest continuities rather than radical ruptures is bound to upset our well-established principles of historical periodization. And yet I intend to show in Part I not only that the roots of modern national identity can be traced back to the Middle Ages, but that in turn medieval political developments cannot be understood properly if we fail to notice their dependency on the real or imaginary institutions of the Roman Empire. The Christianized Roman Empire exerted a mythical appeal on the medieval mind, acting as a sort of ideal to which reality should aspire. In particular, the Middle Ages preserved two powerful and interrelated, universalistic conceptions from the Roman period: the idea of imperium and the idea of ecclesia. On the other hand, at the level of the political praxis, the administrative divisions of the Roman period, both political and religious, had a particularistic effect which in the long run would gain the upper hand. This is not to suggest, however, that the seeds of medieval political life derived from the Roman period tout court. After all this would be to ignore the radically dislocating effects of the so-called barbarian Völkerwanderung.

The process by which the different Germanic peoples who settled in Western Europe from the third to the sixth centuries, converted to Christianity and identified to a certain extent with the Roman Empire, whilst progressively developing into unstable kingdoms and territorial principalities, is complex, often contradictory and indeterminate. At this stage the main thing to bear in mind is that there is no historical necessity that explains the form that finally became triumphant in the modern period - the so-called medium sized 'national' state - nor is there a way of predicting which political entities would survive in the end as independent states. As to national identities, once they were formed and had an opportunity to consolidate themselves, their chances of survival were good even if they lost their political autonomy through incorporation into a different state.

The Germanic Invasions

Archaeological records indicate that around 2000 BC a group of IndoEuropean-speaking tribes settled in north-western Europe. After a long period of isolation, around 1000 BC they began to move in search of better land. They already spoke a form of primitive Germanic language. The Germanic peoples dispersed in all directions, particularly towards the south. These migrations often involved whole tribes and even confederations of tribes. By the beginning of our era, they had reached as far as the Caspian Sea, and from the Rhine and Danube to the Black Sea they were surrounding the Roman Empire. At this time there were five major confederations of Germanic tribes: the North Germani (Scandinavians), the East Germani (Alans, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, etc.), the North Sea Germani (Frisians, Angles, Saxons, etc.), the Weser Rhine Germani (Franks, Hessians, etc.) and the Elbe Germani (Alemanni, Bavarians, Sueves, Lombards, etc.). The latter three groups are often referred to as the West Germani. This is, in a nutshell, the traditional vision of the Germanic Völkerwanderung.

There is, however, much controversy over the economic, social and political organization of the Germanic peoples. For different reasons there has been a long history from Julius Caesar and Tacitus through the nineteenth-century historians and jurists to the present day, of emphasizing a clear cut difference between Roman and Germanic societies. However, recent studies suggest, on the one hand, that the supposed primitivism of the Germanic peoples has been exaggerated and that in many respects they were closer to the Romans than the term 'barbarian' might indicate. On the other hand, it would appear that they lacked unilineal descent groups (either matrilineal or patrilineal) and their basic kin group was the bilateral kindred (Thompson, E.A. 1965; Murray, A. 1983).

In the light of the new historiography it would be erroneous to suggest that the Germanic peoples formed a coherent whole. What we know about them is basically coloured by the lenses of the classical writers. In other words, the Germanic world was a creation of Greek and Roman authors, in the same sense that the Oriental world was an invention of modern European writers. However, this should not be interpreted to mean that there was a homogeneous discourse on the Germanic peoples (or on the Orient for that matter), nor that the texts have no knowledgevalue. Another rooted misconception has to do with the nature of the encounter that took place between the Roman Empire and the Germanic peoples. The idea of a continuous confrontation seems to prevail while, in fact, if we take a long historical perspective, a rather different image emerges. In the six centuries that elapsed from the first military victory of the Roman Legions over two Germanic peoples (the Cimbi and the Teutoni) in 102-101 BC to the deposition of Romulus Augustulus by a Germanic mercenary named Odovacar (or Odoacer) in 476 AD, a considerable amount of peaceful contact and accommodation, as well as cultural exchange, took place.

It should be pointed out as well that to define the Germanic peoples as exhibiting an almost 'innate' migratory drive is historically inaccurate, although the East Germani were more 'mobile' than the other groups. This is not to deny their migrations (two of them are well-documented: the incursion of the Marcomanni and allies across the Danube in 167 AD and the crossing of the Rhine by Vandals and Sueves in 406-7 AD), but then most human groups could be characterized as having the same feature. It is much more productive to fix our attention on a peaceful settlement and symbiosis rather than on the disruptive highlights of the invasions. Walter Goffart has put forward a devastating critique of the idea of 'barbarian invasions', and showed how under the label hospitalitas the Romans successfully incorporated a variety of barbarian peoples (Goths, Burgundians, Lombards) into the 'fabric of the West' (1980: 230), but in doing that, I would argue, they contributed to their own downfall. However, as I have made clear before, the reasons for the collapse of the Western Empire must be found elsewhere; in any case, the barbarian invaders of fourth century AD were few in number (each of the peoples counted at the most in tens of thousands) and by themselves they could not not have put an end to the Roman domination. In addition, it is important to remember, as Momigliano rightly suggested, the image that the Roman Empire actually fell without making a noise. In fact, the barbarians were not what occupied the imagination of the people living in the fifth and sixth centuries. What mattered at that time was the 'constant tension with miracles, with the devil, with the pagan's own past, with Jewish or heretic neighbours and with one's own eternal salvation' (Momigliano, A. 1980: 179).

For later reference it should also be kept in mind that while in the areas that we shall refer to as Hispania, Gallia and Italia the settlement of Germanic peoples after the invasions was numerically small, this was not the case in Germania and Britannia. It is not exaggerated to suggest that in the former areas the Germanic peoples were linguistically and culturally swamped by the Romanized local populations, while in the latter areas there was only a tenuous Roman influence. Things changed in Germania with Charlemagne, while Britannia had to wait until the Norman invasion. The presence of the Roman Christian Church in the whole West, with its strong Roman flavour, no doubt provided an indirect source of 'Romanization'.

The social and political organization of the Germanic peoples was characterized by the existence of different types of groups. At the basic level we find the household, which brought together relatives and nonrelatives (dependants and slaves) under the same head or lord. The household offered protection against a variety of threats. At a higher level of integration we encounter a group which is alternatively defined as clan (Fleckenstein, J. 1978) or as a kindred (Murray, A. 1983). Whether it is envisaged as a clan or as a kindred, the group was a flexible tool not only for the generation of concrete social relationships, but also with a specific social function: to keep the peace. In fact it was within the boundaries of this group that blood-feud and vengeance were tackled. It would appear that the genealogical memory of the group did not normally go beyond the third or fourth generation and hence the members of the clan or kindred would be in the range of hundreds (fifty families at the most).

The highest level of political integration among the Germanic peoples was the tribe (Stamm), also referred to as people (populus, civitas), nation (natio), ethnic unit, etc. It is appropriate to start the discussion by saying that the level of homogeneity, the character and the size of the tribes varied tremendously in time and in space. Tribes can be envisaged as ethnic units based on blood ties and on similar laws and customs, linguistic similarities and common patterns of warfare. Membership was usually acquired at birth, though some of the 'wandering' tribes of the fourth and fifth centuries were aggregates which included individuals recruited from non- Germanic origins (Roman slaves, colonni, etc.). Tribes were perceived as different entities by the Romans and were named (Franks, Burgundians, Saxons, Visigoths, etc.). It is a historical fallacy to assume that tribes survived after a long period of time without serious changes in personnel, just because the same name was preserved. However, for the members of the tribe the belief in a common ancestor was essential in order to maintain the sense of identity and unity of the group as a whole. In this respect, as J. Fleckenstein (1978: 9) has remarked, the tribe was seen as the extension of the clan - as a gigantic clan (in any case, as a consanguine community). Consequently, the tribe also performed some of the traditional functions of the clan.

As compared with Roman social and political organization, the Germanic tribe exhibited some fundamental differences. As J, Strayer put it:

[The Germanic political system] was based on blood ties and personal allegiance to a ruler rather than on loyalty to an impersonal state. It had no territorial basis ... It was directed by unwritten custom and tradition rather than man-made laws and administrative decisions. It demanded more of free men, in expecting all those of military age to serve in the army - less in not requiring taxes and obedience to economic regulations (1982: 28).

With the period of migrations, the Germanic tribes, particularly the East Germani, became larger and more structured, often incorporating other Germanic and non-Germanic tribes and individuals. The idea of a league or confederation of tribes, although not unknown in the earlier period, now becomes more common.

The history of the Germanic peoples shows the appearance and disappearance of tribes which seem to leave no trace behind after a short period of fulgor. It has been suggested by J. Armstrong (1982: 28), following an idea by the German anthropologist Reinhard Wenskus, that the reason for such an occurrence was that tribal names and identities were exclusively maintained by a reduced number of people consisting of the leader, the nobility and its families. They were the ones who had real genealogies. In fact, 'the initial impulse to Stamm formation was thirst for adventure, glory, booty, or even subsistence. As he became successful, however, the leader elaborated and inculcated an identity myth. This myth rarely claimed autochthonous status for the emerging identity group; instead, it ascribed a distant, fabulous origin' (Armstrong, J. 1982: 29). Around this myth the small nucleus would expand to constitute a sizeable Stamm. Sustained failure of the tribe to prosper in terms of victories, booty or territories could lead to the disappearance of the group. It is difficult to generalize about how cohesive the Stämme were. To start with, the reasons that kept the members of a given Stamm together varied tremendously: from territorial contiguity to legal customs, from religious rites to linguistic similarities, from the belief in common ancestors to the attraction of a king. We know that in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• PART I The Nation: A Medieval Heritage
• PART II The Development of Nationalism: Structural Factors
• PART III The Development of Nationalism: Ideological Factors
• PART IV The Development of Nationalism: Historical Processes
• PART V Theoretical Recapitulation
• Index