Ancient and Modern Concept of Nationalism

• The modern understanding of nation is significantly different from its earlier usages.

• In ancient Rome, the Latin word natio meant ‘a group of outsiders,’ referring to communities of foreigners who lived in Rome without Roman citizenship.

• Being a ‘national’ in ancient Rome was considered derogatory, placing individuals below Romans in terms of status.

• The term nation was applied to communities of students in medieval universities, who were usually not from the university’s locality, and were identified with certain intellectual positions.

• This led to a modified understanding of nation, viewed not only as a ‘community of foreigners’ but also as a ‘community of opinion.’

• The concept of nation no longer connoted a disadvantaged position but remained limited and temporary. A student lost their national identity once they completed their studies and left the university.

• The dominant meaning of nation as a ‘community of opinion’ was also utilized in medieval ecclesiastical councils, which represented various positions regarding the organization of the Republica Christiana.

• In these councils, the term nation referred to representatives of cultural and political authority, transforming into an honorific term but still temporary and limited to a small elite group.

• By the early 16th century, the term nation was applied to the people of England, evolving into a synonym for the ‘people’, acquiring its modern political meaning as a ‘sovereign people’.

• The modern meaning of nation as a sovereign people made nationhood a desirable status and assumed unprecedented universality.

• The term people, before its association with the nation, referred to the masses, the rabble, or the lower class, while the nation referred to the elite.

• The new association of nation (elite) with people (masses) led to a reconceptualization of both terms. The people as nation acquired prestige, transforming from the depoliticized masses to the object of loyalty and the foundation of political solidarity.

• With this new meaning, talking about the English, French, German, or Russian people referred to all citizens, free and equal.

• This shift was accompanied by a major transformation in the social order, where the community, now defined as a nation, was imagined as sovereign and as a community of equals.

• The aspiration for a transformed social solidarity became the basis for the new form of political camaraderie central to nationalism.

• As a sovereign people, the word nation acquired another connotation when applied to other populations and countries, claiming political, territorial, and/or ethnic qualities.

• The new meaning of nation, associated with the ‘uniqueness’ of a sovereign people, gave rise to a particularistic nature of nationalism.

• Structural conditions such as industrialization, social mobility, bourgeois revolution, and democratization were linked with the concept of nation as a sovereign people distinguished by ethnic characteristics.

• Some scholars argue that the transformation of the nation concept profoundly changed the nature of nationalism.

• Both connotations of nation still exist today, reflecting two radically different forms of nationalism, national identity, and consciousness.

Characteristics of Nation

• The manner in which social solidarity and cohesion was thought of depended on historically contingent socio-political forces.

• The following characteristics of a nation can be seen as constituting a ‘pattern of preponderance’:

  1. Boundaries of territory or both.

  2. Indivisibility—the idea that the nation is an integral unit.

  3. Sovereignty, or the aspiration to sovereignty, and the desire for formal equality with other nations, usually as an autonomous and self-sufficient state.

  4. An ascending notion of legitimacy—the idea that government is just only when supported by popular will or when it serves the interests of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’.

  5. Popular participation in collective affairs, with a mobilized population based on national membership (whether for war or civic activities).

  6. Direct membership, where each individual is understood to be immediately a part of the nation and categorically equivalent to other members.

  7. Culture, including a combination of language, shared beliefs and values, and habitual practices.

  8. Temporal depth, with the nation existing through time, encompassing past and future generations, and having a history.

  9. Common descent or racial characteristics.

  10. Special historical or even racial characteristics.

• These characteristics are also features of the rhetoric of nation, or the claims made in describing nations.

• Sovereignty, integrity, and social solidarity inform the aspiration and mobilization to constitute a nation.

• Historically, nationalisms have differed in the manner in which this solidarity was envisaged and the way it was sought to be achieved.

NATIONALISM: HISTORICAL FORMS

European Nationalism: The Cases of England, France and Germany

• Nationalism has taken diverse forms historically, but in all cases, there was a group or groups of people shaped by socio-economic change who felt constrained by their traditional identity and social order.

• In England, the growth of capitalism, industrialisation, and urbanisation led to the emergence of a middle class at odds with the traditional elite.

• The social relations and economic transactions promoted by capitalism were at variance with the traditional hierarchies and idea of reciprocity that characterized the old state and society.

• The structures of state evolved with a greater distancing between politics, social, and economic spheres, the latter characterized by notions of liberty and freedom.

• The bonds that held society together were a mutual recognition of individual liberty and allegiance to the state.

• The English idea of the nation was individualistic, focused on individual sovereignty and allegiance to the state.

• Enlightenment thought triggered movements for political freedom against the Monarchy in France.

• The revolutionary struggle for liberty, equality, and fraternity transformed the socio-political structure in France.

• Ideas of equality and participation in collective life became the basis of the new social solidarity in France.

• The French nation was marked by a horizontal camaraderie and characterized by a ‘daily plebiscite’, emphasizing its participatory and republican nature.

• The prominent social forces in France were lesser landowners, the emergent national middle class, and intellectuals as spokespeople.

• French nationalism was civic in nature, distinct from English individualistic nationalism.

• German nationalism was another form of collectivist nationalism in Western Europe, emphasizing an ethnic basis for solidarity.

• After the Napoleonic Wars, Germany built a modern government on medieval rule, cemented by pride in their past culture.

England

• The contours of Nationalism began to take shape in England in the early sixteenth century amidst the decimation of the feudal order in the late fifteenth century.

• Fifteenth century English society was feudal, and inequality was seen as natural, divinely ordained, and permanent.

• The justification for inequality and hierarchy was sought in the divine plan or the cosmic order.

• An individual’s status in the social hierarchy was considered part of the divine order, fulfilling its appointed purpose in a larger providential scheme.

• There were three major feudal orders or ‘estates’: the nobility, the clergy, and the toilers, each with a defined role and restrictions on inter-order mobility.

• The War of the Roses (ended in 1485) decimated the traditional feudal aristocracy and created a vacuum at the top of the social hierarchy.

• The Tudor dynasty‘s accession to the throne after the war necessitated upward social mobility.

• The new aristocracy that replaced the old clergy and nobility were University-trained laymen from the minor gentry and lower strata.

• This emergence of the new aristocracy transformed English society, where status was no longer dependent on birth, but on merit and ability.

• The growth of capitalism gave new respectability to economic activity for profit rather than mere subsistence.

• A new class of merchants contributed to redefining social stratification and justifying occupational mobility.

• The new aristocracy justified this new framework of upward mobility with a new social consciousness, distancing itself from the feudal imagination of divine order and providential scheme.

• This new consciousness was nationalism, reflecting the transformed order where every member of the nation or the people was equal, free, and had the right of self-government or sovereignty.

• The sovereignty of the nation in England was derived from the presumed sovereignties of each member in the national collectivity.

• The nation was defined as a composite entity, existing only insofar as its members kept the social compact, with no separate interests or will from the members.

• English nationalism, according to Liah Greenfeld, was individualistic and civic, where national identity was identical with citizenship or voluntary membership in the community.

France

• Much before nationalism emerged in France, a distinct French identity existed around the specificity of French Christianity, seen as superior to Roman Christianity, claimed by the French kings.

• From the twelfth century, the king was seen as the ‘true’ vicar or priest of God on earth, with no distinction between religious and political spheres of activity.

• In the early modern period, secularisation of French identity occurred, mainly due to the religious wars in the sixteenth century, leading to the French identity assuming a political form.

• The idea of the state as the area over which the king had authority transformed French identity from being a good Christian to membership in the king’s community of subjects.

• The community of subjects was structured by a hierarchy of officials, binding the king’s sphere of authority.

• Over time, the hierarchy of officials began to wield authority and loyalty within their own spheres, giving an identity to the state as a network of structures distinct from the king.

• This emergence of a parallel system of loyalty changed the object of loyalty from the king to the state in the minds of the subjects.

• French aristocracy was the primary mover and beneficiary of the distancing between the king and the state, which led to a change in the focus of the subject’s loyalty.

• Unlike England, where the nobility had some autonomy within the feudal setup, the absolutist monarchy in France meant that the aristocracy depended on royal power for status and wealth.

• The aristocracy continually struggled against royal absolutism, rejecting the idea of the king and state as one and instead interpreting the state as the community of France, the French people, and the territory as a nation.

• This interpretation was influenced by the English notion of nation, introduced into France by French intellectuals associated with the aristocracy, contributing to the redefinition of the identity of the French nobility.

• When the concept of nation was first imported into France, it was synonymous with the nobility and remained so until the French Revolution (1789).

• Even after 1789, the ‘nation’ referred to the people, represented by the elite, who assumed the role of political representation and affirmed their political power.

• Unlike England, French nationalism was collectivistic, authoritarian, and based on inequality between the masses and the representatives.

• However, like English nationalism, French nationalism was civic, meaning membership in the French nation was not based on race, ethnicity, or other ties, but on participation as citizens.

• Some scholars see a contradiction between the individual freedom implied by the civic criterion of membership and the authoritarianism of the collectivistic nature of French nationalism.

Germany

• German nationalism differed from English and French nationalism, as it was created due to the dissatisfaction of middle-class intellectuals, rather than the aristocracy.

• The ‘educated bourgeoisie’ in Germany enjoyed a higher status, despite having belonged to the lower classes before acquiring a university education.

• The value of education in upward mobility began to wane in the 18th century for several reasons, notably due to the Enlightenment movement.

• The Enlightenment brought aspirations and promises among intellectuals but also led to disillusionment as the number of intellectuals increased, accompanied by unemployment and poverty among them.

• The fall in status of intellectuals triggered a reaction against the Enlightenment, leading to Romanticism, an intellectual response.

• Romanticism was characterized by diverse strands of discontent with changes following the French and Industrial revolutions, rejecting the rational self and embracing the creative self.

• Romantic critiques rejected the idea of a well-ordered, rational society and embodied progress, opening up the possibility for different understandings of the self’s relationship with nature.

• The Romantics did not initially formulate a philosophy for a German political system until the Napoleonic invasion, which led to the articulation of a German fraternity.

• Unlike the French experience, where the rulers were targeted, German Romanticism framed the cause of the rulers as the ‘German cause’.

• The German Enlightenment representatives were discredited due to antagonism against the French, and German national consciousness was influenced by Romantic philosophy.

• Romantic philosophy emphasized overcoming the self and recognized communities as the true selves or individuals.

• The true communities, according to Romanticism, were those bound by language, which was determined by blood or ‘race’.

• Based on these principles, the idea of the German nation was conceived as a natural community, created by race and language.

• The German nation was primarily envisioned as an ethnic community, with membership determined by innate ties of race and language that could not be acquired.

Non-European Nationalisms

• Nationalism requires social solidarity, collective identity, and a sense of the autonomous self in relation to the sovereign collective.

• Scholars like Benedict Anderson view nationalism as a discursive formation, focusing on social solidarity and collective identity.

• Anderson describes the nation as an ‘imagined political community’ that is both limited and sovereign.

• By imagined, Anderson means that members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, yet they imagine a sense of communion with them.

• The imagination of the nation is limited because it is confined to the boundaries of the nation, not co-terminus with all of humankind.

• The nation is sovereign because its goal is the nation-state.

• The nation is imagined as a community, where despite inequalities and exploitation, there exists a deep horizontal relationship among its members.

• Anderson argues that once nationalism emerged, it took on a modular form that was available for future mobilizations.

• Anderson identifies three models available for emulation:

  1. Creole nationalism in the Americas, where pilgrim Creole functionaries and provincial Creole printmen created imagined communities with economic interests against the metropole.

  2. Linguistic nationalism of Europe, which had a populist bent, based on the concept of the national-state.

  3. ‘Russifying’ nationalism, or the imposition of cultural homogeneity from the top.

• The three ‘modular’ forms were used by colonial intelligentsia to shape anti-colonial movements.

• Pre-existing forms like print-languages and the idea of the nation helped shape anti-colonial consciousness.

• The bilingual intelligentsia produced by colonial education interpreted these experiences for the masses and played a key role in the demise of colonial rule.

• Colonial rule was significant in the Americas (17th and 18th centuries) and in Asia and Africa (18th, 19th, and 20th centuries).

• Nationalism in colonial societies was primarily anti-colonial, emerging from the frustrations and solidarities of colonial elites.

• Anti-colonial nationalisms emerged within specific social forces and frameworks of political rule.

• In Latin America, Hispanic colonial rule led to a distinctive administrative framework that shaped career patterns.

• The top officials in the colonial bureaucracy were Spaniards who returned to Spain after serving in the colonies, while Creole officers were born locally but limited in their career mobility.

• The career restrictions of the Creole officers generated a sense of frustration and led to solidarity with the homeland (the colonised place).

• The Creole officers‘ mobility within the colony allowed them to gain knowledge of the land, and their education enabled them to spread their sense of identification and solidarity through print media, fostering national identity and unity.

• Anderson argues that these factors led to some of the earliest nationalist movements in the colonies, often led by the privileged elite.

• These elites, speaking the same language and sharing the same religion as the colonisers, conceptualized themselves as distinct nation-bearers.

• Anderson suggests that it was not in the imperial metropole, but in the colonies, where people first conceptualized themselves as having distinct nationalities.

• Once nationalism developed, it became part of a cosmopolitan discourse, influencing European thought and radical politics in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as anti-colonial nationalisms worldwide.

Nationalism as. Difference

• Anderson’s demonstration of the origin and spread of nationalism was innovative, showing that nations were not entirely determined by structural conditions or sociological factors like race, religion, or language.

• Nations were not mere fabrications as suggested by Gellner, but were ‘imagined into existence’.

• The imagination of nations was assisted by several factors, with ‘print-capitalism’ being the predominant one.

• Some scholars have found Anderson’s metaphor of ‘modularity’ or ‘modular forms of nationalism’ misleading and problematic.

• Craig Calhoun rejects Anderson’s argument that there are ‘modular forms’ of nationalism that can be transplanted into new cultural settings without fundamental alterations.

• Partha Chatterjee also rejects the argument of modular forms, claiming that Anderson’s conception of the nation as an imagined community cannot support the idea that nationalist elites in Asia and Africa simply chose from pre-existing modular forms.

• Chatterjee asks, “If nationalisms in the rest of the world have to choose ‘their imagined communities’ from modular forms, what do they have to imagine?”

• Chatterjee argues that Anderson’s formulation prescribes the colonisation of anti-colonial resistance and imaginations of nationalism.

• Chatterjee contends that anti-colonial nationalisms were not based on an identity with the modular forms of national society propagated by the modern West.

• The most powerful and creative forms of nationalist imagination in Asia and Africa were based on a difference with modular forms.

• In his earlier work Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse, Chatterjee argued that the emergence of nationalisms in the late colonial world was part of imperial domination and colonial oppression.

• Chatterjee views these nationalisms as a ‘derivative discourse’, blocking authentic self-generated development among colonised communities.

• According to Chatterjee, nationalist politicians, intellectuals, bureaucrats, and capitalists in the colonies were often collaborationist and self-serving, hindering true autonomy.

NATIONALISMS: CIVIC AND ETHNIC

• Despite having core characteristics, there is no uniform ‘nationalism’, and no set of determinate conditions or structures that produce a single kind of nationalism.

• Nationalism has emerged in different forms and unfolded in various ways throughout history.

• Scholars tend to categorise nationalisms into two broad and dichotomous categories, often conceptualized in oppositional terms: ‘political vs. cultural’, ‘Western vs. Eastern’, and more recently, ‘civic vs. ethnic’.

• This categorisation often assigns ‘good’ nationalism (patriotism) to civic nationalism and ‘bad’ nationalism (chauvinism) to ethnic nationalism.

• Such categorisations assume the two forms of nationalism are inherently distinct, ignoring the commonalities and broader socio-economic structures they share.

• The three dichotomous categories focus on the same dividing line but with slightly different emphases:

  • Political vs. cultural: Stresses the historical priority of political organisation vs. preoccupation with language, literature, history, and folklore.

  • Western vs. Eastern: Generally cultural markers; the ‘Western’ nation is often civic, while the ‘Eastern’ nation is considered ethnic.

  • Civic vs. ethnic: Contributes to the political and cultural types, emphasizing citizenship in civic nationalism and race, blood, and soil in ethnic nationalism.

• The dividing line reflects the view that nations are the most complete manifestation of human identity, with a long and continuous history, extending into the pre-modern period.

• Most nationalists trace the origins of their national identity back to the pre-modern period.

• Scholars like Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith acknowledge the influence of pre-modern ethnic ties and memories of ethnic identities in the formation of nationalisms.

• Jurgen Habermas points out that the meaning of the ‘nation’ has shifted from a pre-political unity to a role in defining the political identity of citizens within a democratic polity.

• National identity and citizenship are now seen as derived from the practices of citizens, rather than from common ethnic and cultural properties.

• This shift in thinking aligns with Ernest Renan’s dictum: ‘the existence of a nation… is a daily plebiscite’.

• Renan used this formulation to counter the German Empire’s claim to Alsace after 1871, asserting that the French nationality of the inhabitants was based on active civic participation rather than ethnic origin.