Nations and nationalism
In the period from around 1850 to the start of the First World War in 1914 there
was a marked rise in popular nationalist consciousness across Europe, with the
unification of Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871, and the so-called ‘scramble for
Africa’ pitting the European nations against one another on that continent, while
a precarious balance of power was maintained within Europe. After its defeat in
the First World War the Austro-Hungarian Empire fragmented into ‘new’ nations
such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary. There was much discussion of the right to
national self-determination. In the period after the Second World War there was
less theoretical interest in nationalism, with ideological debate centred on the struggle
between liberal capitalism and state socialism; this was despite the fact that it was
a period of significant nation-building in Africa and Asia in the wake of
decolonisation. Since the dramatic events in Eastern Europe in 1989 there has been
an extraordinary resurgence of interest in nationalism; in large part this has been
due to the recognition that powerful nationalist sentiments survived 40 years of
state socialism in Eastern Europe. So while nationalism is a ‘traditional ideology’
it is very much one the study of which is in the ascendant.
In previous chapters we have cautioned against overreliance on dictionary
definitions in trying to understand concepts in political theory. While it can be useful
to trace the etymology of words, everyday usage is too diverse and conflicting to
provide guidance on the correct employment of concepts, the meanings of which
are bound up with particular theories. The word ‘nation’ is a good example of the
dangers of dictionary definitions. Dictionaries trace the word ‘nation’ to the Latin
natio, and the Latin term was certainly used in the medieval period. For example,
there is a debate about whether Scotland was really a nation before the Act of Union
with England in 1707; one of the documents used in favour of the claim that
Scotland was indeed a nation is the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), which was
written in Latin and uses the term natio. The difficulty with this argument is that
natiocan be translated as ‘place of birth’ – note the English word ‘natal’ – and the
37 signatories when they make reference to themselves as a ‘nation’ may not
necessarily have possessed the modern consciousness of nationhood (Davidson,
2000: 48–9). The point is that words do not, in themselves, settle arguments over
the nature of nationalism. Meanings are embedded in theories. However, it is useful
to set out a variety of alternative definitions of ‘nation’ and of ‘nationalism’, and
try to identify commonalities and divergences. We start with ‘nation’:
The totality of people who are united by a common fate so that they possess a
common (national) character. The common fate is... primarily a common
history; the common national character involves almost necessarily a uniformity
of language.
(Otto Bauer in Davis, 1967: 150)
A nation is a community of sentiment that could adequately manifest itself in a
state of its own: hence a nation is a community which normally tends to produce
a state of its own.
(Max Weber in Hutchinson and Smith, 1994: 25)260 Part 2 Classical ideologies