European Nations

Explaining Their Formation

Miroslav Hroch, Karolina Graham

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781781688366
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Nationalism & Patriotism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the history of modern political thought, no topics have attracted as much attention as nationalism, nation-formation, and patriotism. A mass of literature has grown around these vexed issues, muddying the waters, and a level-headed clarification is long overdue.Rather than adding another theory of nationalism to this maelstrom of ideas, Miroslav Hroch has created a remarkable synthesis, integrating apparently competing frameworks into a coherent system that tracks the historical genesis of European nations through the sundry paths of the nation-forming processes of the nineteenth century. Combining a comparative perspective on nation-formation with invaluable theoretical insights, European Nations is essential for anyone who wants to understand the historical roots of Europe's current political crisis.

PART I

‘Nation’ and ‘Nationalism’ as Roots of Terminological Confusion

Research on nation-formation and nationalism in Europe occupies a significant place within the historical and social sciences, as is shown by the extent of public interest and the volume of scientific work on the topic. The fact that the number of published studies has grown whenever there has been an increase in nationalist tensions proves that these issues have always been connected with current policies. Indeed, the sheer quantity of partial findings and sophisticated theories appear to have turned the issues of nation and nationalism into a very chaotic terrain, within which researchers often find it hard to orientate themselves. It is not the aim of this book to present a systematic overview of existing opinions and theories.¹ However, a mutual understanding is difficult, since only a minimal consensus has been reached about the terms, hence the need to offer a clarification of the basic terms and concepts.

CHAPTER 1

Definitional Disputes

A closer examination of a number of randomly selected studies of the concepts of nation and nationalism reveals that each author interprets these terms quite differently. This is accompanied by efforts to be original, which have reached a global scale, with regard not only to definitions and interpretations but also to the creation of new terminology. The basic difficulty lies in attempting to analyse modern social and cultural processes by making use of a term that emerged in the Middle Ages and has been used continually until modern times. Although the common root of the term ‘nation’ was the Latin natio, its transfer or translations into different languages took place under a variety of circumstances, both political and social, thus giving it rather divergent meanings.

In eighteenth-century English, the term ‘nation’ referred to all the people who were governed by the same ruler (i.e. those living in the same state) and abided by the same laws. Whereas the first edition of the French Grande Encyclopédie characterised la nation in a similar vein, and its second edition had already added a common language to the definition. In the German linguistic tradition, Nation was primarily associated with culture and language, and sometimes also with a common past. An added difficulty in this case was that there was a partial overlap between this translation from Latin and the conventional German term Volk.¹ In the 1650s in another part of central Europe, the Czech scholar Jan Amos Komenský (‘Comenius’) defined a nation (gens seu natio in Latin) as a community of people who occupy a common territory, have a common past and a common language, and are bound by a love for their common homeland.² He would not have been alone in his ‘premodernly modern’ understanding of this term.

Another basic term within the current terminology is ‘nationalism’, whose genesis was very different. It was first used as a new term within political discourse, which gave it political and critical connotations. Even though the first attempts were made in the interwar period, nationalism did not become widely used as an instrument of scientific analysis until the second half of the twentieth century. The difficulty is that the term nationalism is derived from, as well as associated with, the term nation, whose historically determined connotations in various languages are very different. ‘Nationalism’, which was a label for a particular political or intellectual approach, was an instrument of value-orientated political controversies at the beginning of the twentieth century (and has remained such since then). It gradually came to be closely linked with the term ‘nation’, whose genesis is rooted in premodern times. The confusion is compounded by the fact that the way the term ‘nationalism’ is interpreted by members of different nationalities is largely dependent on the ways in which the term ‘nation’ is understood within their national linguistic traditions. In English, therefore, a connection is logically made between ‘nationalism’ and the state, i.e. a struggle for statehood; while in German terminology, where die Nation had originally been defined by culture and language, ‘nationalism’ has yet to find its place, and its interpretations are contradictory. In addition, in both English and German – and even more so in Russian and Czech – this term is subconsciously, if not consciously, associated with negative manifestations of national existence and struggles conducted ‘in the name of the nation’. I will have the opportunity to demonstrate with a number of examples that even prominent researchers have succumbed to terminological confusion.

Perception of the Nation in the Nineteenth Century

Historians and other scientists turned their attention to the concept of ‘a nation’ at a time when nations had begun to form, as a result of which scientific discourse on the topic was inevitably affected by the specific circumstances of a given nation and the attitudes of the scientists in question. There was a marked difference between scientists, determined by the differing national situations in which they found themselves: those who studied the nation under the circumstances of a state nation that had existed continuously since medieval times (such as France and England) regarded the existence of a community, labelled as a ‘nation’, as self evident, a matter of course. Others, who approached this topic under the circumstances of a national struggle for (state or culturally defined) existence, first had to ascertain which characteristics would be appropriate in defining the new community, thereby differentiating it from the other communities.

It is no coincidence that by far the greatest number of contributions to the discussion about the definition of a nation at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries can be found in Central Europe and in German-speaking countries. As has already been mentioned, the newly forming national community was referred to using terms that were linguistically and historically anchored in the Middle Ages. All these circumstances influenced both the terminology itself and the starting points for methodologies.

A feature which most works published in the second half of the nineteenth century had in common was the axiomatic view that a nation was a perennial category, whose objective existence not only could, but also needed to be revived and renewed, as something valuable and unique to the human race. Whether we perceive this opinion as perennial or primordial, its shift from the sphere of political struggle into that of scientific research was another consequence of the fact that those who studied the nation were simultaneously members of that nation – or, more precisely, participants in the national struggle, whatever its form.

There is no need to reiterate here the views of individual historians, sociologists and political scientists about the ‘nation’ and its origin. It suffices to point out that works on this subject which originated in the last third of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century can be roughly divided into two basic streams. The first defined a nation by objective, empirically verifiable characteristics, which in Central and Eastern Europe tended to comprise primarily cultural and linguistic features, in combination with various other elements ranging from political ties and ties to a territory to ‘blood ties’. Anglo-Saxon authors appear to have already then had difficulty adding ‘non-state’ nations to the list labelled by the English term ‘nation’, seeking alternative terms for them, such as ‘nationality’, ‘people’ and ‘national group’.³

However, by the turn of the twentieth century some authors had reached the conclusion that it was impossible to find a universal combination of characteristics that would apply to all communities referred to as nations at that time. Friedrich Meinecke’s distinction between Staatsnation and Kulturnation proved highly influential, differentiating between whether the communities that saw themselves as national formed a state entity or were based on a common language and culture. The Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer sought another solution to the same issue by considering a common past to be the decisive factor, since it turned members of the same nation into a ‘community of fate’. This in turn gave rise to the characterisation of nations as communities of a particular culture or ‘character’. Over the course of centuries’ worth of common history, nations progressed through a number of stages, which differed in relation to who understood themselves as a stable community – in other words, in relation to how each particular nation’s social structure broadened.⁴

Only a few authors defined a nation primarily in subjective terms – as a community of people who were aware of their belonging to a particular nation, and desired it. This manifested itself either as an active endeavour to ‘create’ a nation or as a simple agreement about belonging to an already existent nation. Nowadays, this attitude is most commonly characterised by Ernest Renan’s declaration about a nation being a ‘daily plebiscite’, but it must be remembered that it also played a major role in Germany, where it was justified by the so-called ‘statistics school’.⁵ Max Weber came even closer to the ‘subjectivist’ concept of a nation when he defined it as a group of people who feel ‘a particular sense of solidarity’ towards one another. He associated a nation with issues of prestige and power–prestige.⁶ Such subjectivist concepts were of only marginal importance at first, and did not influence historical research significantly until the interwar era and after World War II, by which time the focal point had shifted from the nation to nationalism.

The dividing line between the two attitudes cannot be made absolute: authors who strove to define a nation by means of objective characteristics grew increasingly aware that a nation cannot exist without its members being self-aware, while, conversely, the subjectivist definition of a nation did not rule out the existence of objective ties between that nation’s members.⁷

During the interwar period in Europe, studies pertaining to the concept of the nation were published primarily in Germany. Amid the nationalistic works, connected to a greater or lesser degree with or inclined towards Nazi racial concepts, some very interesting studies were published by a number of sociologists and political scientists, who built upon both Friedrich Meinecke’s ideas – striving to further differentiate between his terms – and Otto Bauer’s views.⁸

While European research continued to focus on the concept of the nation, a new analytical term, ‘nationalism’, was successfully applied in the American setting by Carlton Hayes. His definition was initially critical, in that he perceived nationalism as a ‘proud, boastful way of thinking about one’s own nation’, accompanied by inimical attitudes towards other nations. Later, however, he defined several types of nationalism: humanist (Rousseau, Herder), Jacobite, traditionalist (Burke, the German Romantics), liberal (Welcker, Mazzini) and integral (Fascism, Nazism).⁹ He also attempted to define nationalism in neutral terms – as a fusion of patriotism and an ‘awareness of one’s nationality’.¹⁰

Perception of the Nation in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

The devastating experience of Nazism and Fascism, which World War II brought not only to Europe but the whole world, had an impact on research into the nation and nationalism. The political relevance of this type of research had grown, and with it the degree of authors’ engagement. While their views continued to differ, in several respects most researchers agreed on what needed to be emphasised and what had already been resolved:

1.The vast majority of researchers distanced themselves from the perception of a nation as a ‘community of blood’, and decreasing interest was shown in the idea that a nation was a perennial category.

2.There was general agreement about the fact that a nation could not be defined by ethnic features (language and culture) alone.

3.A nation was now increasingly recognised as an independent community only if its members could be demonstrated to be aware of their belonging together, and to value it.

4.This gave rise to a growing emphasis on the subjectivist characterisation of a nation over the following decades, and to ‘nationalism’ being studied as a manifestation and even precondition for the existence of a nation.

The political context meant that the term ‘nationalism’ was reflected upon more frequently. Although some authors did not consider it important to define the term, they believed nationalism to be a socially dangerous, unnatural attitude that needed to be overcome.¹¹ The perception that nationalism was a neutral term that encompassed internal differences was initially accepted only to a very limited degree.

A polarised version of Hayes’s concept, advocated by Hans Kohn, proved important.¹² Kohn defined nationalism as ‘a state of mind’, and in general terms related it to the nation state. In his view there were two types of nationalism. The first type was progressive – liberal and democratic – nationalism, which emerged in Western Europe, partly from English liberalism but mainly from the democratic ideals of the French Revolution. In contrast to this type, there was reactionary, ‘non-Western’ nationalism, dictated primarily by the German, language-based definition of the term ‘nation’, which Kohn saw as irrational, mythological and authoritarian. Although he later moderated this strict polarisation by acknowledging that democratic nationalism also existed in some of the smaller countries in Eastern Europe, his dichotomy directly or indirectly influenced or inspired whole generations of researchers to come.¹³

Characteristically, Kohn made no attempt to define a nation, perceiving it to be a product of nationalism. It is equally characteristic that authors who later made a critical revision of his dichotomy essentially shared his views. The Finnish historian Aira Kemiläinen, one of Kohn’s first critics, convincingly demonstrated in the early 1960s that his dichotomy could not be applied along the simplified West–East axis.¹⁴ Kohn’s dichotomy was revised at the end of the century, when it was politicised rather uncritically.¹⁵

Of the many authors who spent the postwar decades re-examining the definition, several leaned towards the idea of a nation being determined by a loose combination of a number of types of ties. Some – Boyd Shafer, in particular – conceived of these ties as ‘illusions’ that led to nationalism as the main source of strength for the nation.¹⁶ Pitirim Sorokin defined a nation as a ‘multi-bounded group’, comprising a group of people who were ‘brought together by two or more simple ties’, which may (but may not) have included language, territory, religion and physical settings. In the spirit of the older English linguistic tradition, Sorokin differentiated ‘nation’ from ‘nationality’, which he defined as an ethnic group bound by one tie alone: a language.¹⁷

In the decades that followed, attempts to define a nation with the help of attributes or ties were relatively infrequent, though no less important. The most significant representative of this current of thought was Anthony Smith, who characterised a nation as ‘a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members’.¹⁸ I had advocated a similar notion already in 1968, when I proposed the view that the modern nation, which I distinguished from the premodern nation, was determined by relationships – i.e. ties between its members that formed gradually – and that these relationships were mutually interchangeable. While it cannot be empirically proved that nations are characterised by a given ‘binding’ set of relationships, it can be proved that the community called ‘nation’ has always been – at least in Europe – characterised by a combination of several types of ties and relationships (linguistic, historical, economic, religious, political, and so on), and that the absence of any of these has not ruled out the existence of a given nation. However, two undeniable characteristics of a nation are that, firstly, its members are connected with each other by an intensity of communication and common fate that is greater than that connecting them with members of other nations, and, secondly, that they are a community of equal citizens who perceive themselves as members of the nation.¹⁹ In simple terms, subjective attitudes and objective relationships form a complementary structure.

Karl W. Deutsch’s notions represented a significant step in the direction of resolving the debate about defining a nation by spec...