The Dark Side of Nation-States

Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe

Philipp Ther

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781782383031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Genocidio e crimini di guerra

Why was there such a far-reaching consensus concerning the utopian goal of national homogeneity in the first half of the twentieth century? Ethnic cleansing is analyzed here as a result of the formation of democratic nation-states, the international order based on them, and European modernity in general. Almost all mass-scale population removals were rationally and precisely organized and carried out in cold blood, with revenge, hatred and other strong emotions playing only a minor role. This book not only considers the majority of population removals which occurred in Eastern Europe, but is also an encompassing, comparative study including Western Europe, interrogating the motivations of Western statesmen and their involvement in large-scale population removals. It also reaches beyond the European continent and considers the reverberations of colonial rule and ethnic cleansing in the former British colonies.

CHAPTER 1

PRECONDITIONS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING

Major developments in the nineteenth century paved the way for ethnic cleansing: the emergence of modern nationalism, the theory and practice of the nation-state, and the “minority problems” they gave rise to. This short list hints at the fact that contemporary analyses of the nineteenth century are inevitably done in the light of the catastrophes of the twentieth century. But the danger of arriving at teleological and sweeping causal explanations can be avoided if each period is studied in its own right. Hence, this chapter is dedicated to preconditions of ethnic cleansing and thus mostly the nineteenth century, while the main and empirical chapters of the book (chapters 2–5) focus on the agents, or initiators, of ethnic cleansing.

It is almost a truism to identify nationalism as the main cause of ethnic cleansing. Following Benedict Anderson, nationalism is defined here as an ideology of national movements, and the nation as a construct. The key question to ask, then, is why concepts of nation became so narrow over the course of the nineteenth century in Europe that ethnic cleansing became feasible in later years.

A second, closely related issue explored in this chapter is the theory and practice of the nation-state. While radical nationalists fantasized about ethnic cleansing as early as 1848, it took modern states to carry it out. In this context, it is important to consider not only nation-states in the narrow sense but also “nationalizing empires.” The Prusso-German and Russian empires both pursued centrally controlled population policies with a nationalizing goal, sparking conflicts that had fatal repercussions well into the twentieth century.

National minorities emerged when nations consolidated and modern, centralist nation-states were built. Though not recognized as subjects under international law until the Paris Peace Treaties of 1919–20, minorities had been the subject of a mostly negative discourse prior to that. They came to be perceived as a problem and a danger in the second half of the nineteenth century. The third section of this chapter traces these changing attitudes toward minorities in national and international policy.

Subsequently, this chapter reflects on “European modernity,” in reference to Zygmunt Bauman. Why was the population of Europe counted and categorized so rigidly and—in most countries—in terms of national majorities and minorities? How did the stark and seemingly objective distinctions drawn between ethnically defined population groups facilitate later population removals?¹ Finally, chapter 1 shows the impact of Christian intolerance on violent nationalism and ethnic cleansing.

The Ideology of Modern Nationalism

Specialists in the history of nation building and nationalism have frequently distinguished between state-engineered nationalism and cultural nationalism. This distinction was already inherent in Friedrich Meinicke’s dual concept of the civic nation and the cultural nation (Staatsnation and Kulturnation). Certainly, most Western European national movements—the Norwegian, Irish, and Catalan being notable exceptions—operated in the context of already existent nation-states,² whereas the nations east of the Rhine were defined chiefly by culture and above all by language. “Which is the German’s fatherland?” asked Ernst Moritz Arndt, one of the leading German nationalist activists of the early nineteenth century: “As far’s the German accent rings / And hymns to God in heaven sings.”³ This fixation on cultural expression and institutions arose from the political context of Central and Eastern Europe. Here, national movements operated within empires where state and linguistic borders did not match. Language, literature, music, or culture was often the best and sometimes only instrument available for marking out and mobilizing the prospective members of a specific nation. In this sense, nation building took place on a horizontal, or spatial, and a vertical, or societal, level.

Cultural or linguistic nationalism is often portrayed as more exclusive than the state-led nationalism of Western Europe. But a closer look at France at the time of the French Revolution refutes this. Bertrand Barère, a member of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety, declared in a speech in 1794:

Federalism and superstition speak Breton; emigration and hatred of the Republic speak German; the counter-revolution speaks Italian and fanaticism speaks Basque. Let us smash these instruments of harm and error.… To leave the citizens in the ignorance of their vernacular is to betray the fatherland. … Citizens, the language of a free people must be one and the same for all.⁴

Barère’s words reveal the centralist and leveling aspect of early nationalism. Linguistic nationalism was a crucial instrument for mobilizing society in France’s defense in the Revolutionary Wars.

Rigidly differentiating between nationalism based on existing states and nationalism based on culture is problematic in view of the fact that national movements were prone to adapt their principles according to the political and social context. A case in point is the modern Polish national movement, which was initially oriented toward the state in the late eighteenth century but found itself relying on cultural factors following the country’s partition. Conversely, in some nation-states, culture played a crucial role in promoting identification with the titular nation. Some examples are the German Empire, Czechoslovakia, and interwar Poland. These cases contradict the view, propounded by the older tradition of nationalism studies, that modern nationalism spread from Western to Eastern Europe, becoming increasingly narrow and aggressive along the way.⁵

Furthermore, the distinction between civic nations and cultural nations has given rise to a normative bias often articulated as an East-West conflict. Hans Kohn, and Ernest Gellner a generation after him, contrasted an inclusive nationalism specific to Western Europe with an exclusive nationalism found in Central and Eastern Europe. The same normative contrast has inspired other dualities, such as a subjective versus objective or political versus ethnic nationalism. Ernest Renan is widely regarded as symbolizing a civil and open definition of the nation. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that he published his concept of nation as the “plebiscite du jour”⁶ in a period when the inhabitants of the disputed region of Alsace would probably have voted in favor of France and against the German Empire, had there been a referendum. After 1918, France applied criteria of extraction going back two or three generations to determine who was French and who was not in Alsace. In England, too, the nation was increasingly viewed as a fixed unit, defined by objective criteria. The term “race” was commonly interchanged with “nation” from the late nineteenth century in English as well as in other European languages. Equated with race in this way, the nation came to be seen as objectively definable by immutable characteristics. Contrasting the supposedly subjective, open, civic—in short, good—Western European brand of nationalism with the “bad” nationalism of Central or Eastern Europe, then, makes little sense.

To gain a European perspective, it is necessary to ask why the prevailing understanding of nation in Western and Eastern Europe grew so narrow by World War I that it subsequently legitimized mass population removals. A look at the history of nationalism will help to answer this question. In the brief outline here, particular attention is paid to how nationalism changed over the course of the “long” nineteenth century and how an “ethnic” nationalism emerged, based mainly on origin.

Most historians agree that nation building in Europe gained crucial impetus from the French Revolution and the Revolutionary Wars. Being able to mobilize soldiers by appealing to their national sentiments gave the Grande Nation a considerable advantage over the armies of the anciens régimes. The sense of belonging to the nation even overrode social distinctions. Napoleon’s campaigns prompted nationalist mass mobilization in many other countries of Europe. The Spanish, Russians, Germans, and other peoples fought for their rulers against Napoleon or simply against “the French” in the Wars of Liberation.

The animosity that had meanwhile built up was vented when Napoleon was finally defeated and it came to establishing a framework for peace. Prussian reformer Freiherr vom Stein wrote in 1814 to the governor of the Duchy of Berg: “Any people that wishes to be truly national does not place such trust in foreigners as to mix with them in civil community … It is our duty to the German fatherland to cleanse the Rhineland of everything that made it un-German and holds it in such a state.”⁷ While Stein’s primary concern in the letter was the dispatch of civil servants from France to the Rhineland, his discriminating, generalizing, and vitriolic tone is striking, and especially his use of the word “cleanse” (säubern).

Similar attitudes were displayed in later anti-imperial liberation movements. In 1830 and 1863, Polish insurgents rose up not only against the autocratic rule of the Romanov dynasty but also against “the Russians” in general. In the German Empire, the Polish national movement rebelled against “the Germans” and not just against the Hohenzollerns, the Irish rallied against “the English”—and so on. Crucially, these cases of national mobilization were all fuelled by concepts of opposing national collectives, of “us” and “them.” This antagonistic tenet of nationalism does not require further elucidation here. It is important to note, however, that the principle of liberty—one of the supreme values of the Western world—was often asserted against the background of ethnonational antagonism.

The heritage of feudalism in the continental empires caused further friction. These states were not unmodern or backward in general, as even the multinational empires had mass movements and mass media, two basic components of modern nationalism. But specific nationalities often dominated certain social spheres, causing ethnic and social boundaries to intersect. For example, in many areas of Poland a large part of the urban middle class was not ethnically Polish, but German or Jewish. In regions and cities where two or more nationalities coexisted, parallel societies emerged as a result. In the early modern era, peace could be maintained thanks to the established social hierarchies regulating political organization and the course of daily life. In the early, romantic phase of national movements, moreover, concepts of national territory had not yet concretized, leaving this level of conflict initially dormant.

With their twofold demand of equality for all nations and all their members, however, modern national movements challenged the very foundations of the old order. Not surprisingly, the empires resisted and sought to repress their various aspiring subject nations for many years. But by the time of the 1848 revolutions, even the most tenacious regimes were forced to yield. While the Habsburgs tried to mediate between different national movements via a consolidated state and the new constitution of 1867, other multinational empires allied with their titular nation to become “nationalizing empires.” Cases in point are the Prusso-German Empire, which fell somewhere between nation-state and empire,⁸ the Russian Empire, the Hungarian half of Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century.

The rulers of these empires encouraged their majority nations to collaborate in repressing the minority nationalities. In the German and Russian empires, the Polish were the main targets; in the Ottoman Empire, the persecution of Armenians and other Christian groups assumed popular dimensions long before the genocide of 1915. The nationalism of these empires was, then, just as exclusive as that of the anti-imperial liberation movements. In the case of the German Empire, it was even based on racist notions of superiority. In summary, nationalism was brought under state control, with the effect of restricting but also intensifying it.

In practice, nationalism became increasingly exclusive, especially after the 1848 revolutions. While the prerevolutionary national movements of the Vormärz period still frequently cooperated and coagitated, they now went separate ways. This is best illustrated by the case of Bohemia. When the national German assembly was convened in Frankfurt, the emergent Czech national movement was compelled to take a side. Czech national leader František Palacký decided against joining the national assembly for fear that the Czechs would become just a small minority in a German nation-state. Instead, he aligned his nation with Vienna, hoping that the Austrian Empire would become a federal state with a place for a Czech-ruled Bohemia. In turn, this move had the inadvertent effect of mobilizing the German-speaking population of Bohemia. They, too, intended to fight against becoming a minority, ruled by the Czechs.

Thus, nations clashed over regional dominance as early as 1848 and in the period immediately afterward.⁹ Such conflicts continued to determine the course of events in the major countries of the Habsburg monarchy and other multinational empires. The national movements’ demands for political dominion were so absolute that they left little scope for compromise. In Hungary, for example, the Magyar revolutionaries’ claim to power provoked resistance from resident Serbs, Croatians, and Romanians. In Transylvania, Romanian peasants rallied together and raided Hungarian-owned estates.

The failure of the revolutions in the Habsburg Empire, not least due to these burgeoning national conflicts, left all sides embittered. In a polemic written by Czech Democrat Karel Havliček, the author expressed his hope for the “extinction” not only of the Germans in Bohemia but also of the “Germanized,” meaning those of Czech descent who had conformed to German ways. Romanian revolutionary and later historian Nicolae Bălcescu gloated that Transylvania had been completely “cleansed” of Hungarians.¹⁰ Too much importance should not be attached to these and similar writings, since they constituted no more than fantasies of ethnic cleansing. But the mutual hostility and deadlock caused by the disappointment of the revolution and so many unfulfilled political and social demands had given rise to an undeniably volatile state of affairs. Furthermore, the national movements had formulated clear, exclusive territorial claims during the revolution, which extended far beyond the heartland of the respective nations and added to the tensions.

A case in point is the German national movement, which ended its alliance with the Polish national movement of the Vormärz period in 1848. When the German national assembly discussed the territory of the future German nation-state, it was agreed that it should include the Prussian partition of Poland, where the German-speaking population was in the minority. Liberal assembly member Wilhelm Jordan justified this as “healthy national egotism.”¹¹ This imperial stance was one of the factors prompting the mobilization of the Polish national movement in Poznań, which for the first time united nobility, urban bourgeoisie, and peasantry. In turn, an active national minority was formed in Prussia.

Prussia now had to address the question of how to deal with this minority. From the Congress of Vienna to the founding of the empire, Prussia wavered between pursuing an activ...