Swedish archaeologist and also a supporter of the suVragette movement. In
his articles ‘For how long has woman been considered as the property of
man?’ (1898) and ‘The women’s issue in Sweden’ (1906), he criticized the
widespread belief that the regulation of sexual roles and common rights had
been constant throughout history and was therefore innate to human nature.
Instead, he saw these regulations as a social resource (Arwill-Nordbladh
1989). Secondly, the very idea of the nation reinforced women’s inferiority:
nationalist ideology naturalized their subjugation by deWning rival nations as
feminine, by which it was meant that they were weak and a failure. Further
examples could be cited here, but one will suYce. In 1872, in the journalThe
Dark Bluea certain W. Turley claimed that ‘a nation of eVeminate enfeebled
bookworms scarcely forms the most eVective bulwark of a nation’s liberties’,
while also identifying the English with the masculine (Dodd 1999: 91) (see
discussion on this in Yuval-Davis & Pryke 1998 and Anthias 1989).
Nationalism increasingly left behind its reformist character to become a useful
mechanism for governments to bind the population to the state machine.
This does not mean that nationalism was exclusively encouraged from
above. Its value for the state was that people willingly, and in some cases even
wholeheartedly, believed in it by identifying with their nation (Chapter 14). If in
the early years nationalism had been the cause of anti-clericals and left-wingers,
now, without completely losing the loyalty of most progressive liberals, its main
thrust was conservative, anti-liberal, and right-wing. The rise of parliamentary
democracy continued. Despite this, discrimination against minorities—blacks
in America, minority ethnic groups such as gypsies and peoples speaking other
‘non-national’ languages in many parts of Europe—remained the norm. Racism
and xenophobia were on the increase (for a brief discussion on anti-Semitism
see Chapter 6). Indeed, it also aVected how Europeans (and Euro-Americans)
saw each other. It was generally believed that the English, Germans, and other
North Europeans belonged to a superior race of Nordics or Aryans. In contrast,
peoples of Mediterranean and Eastern Europe were inferior breeds (Kidd 1999:
249; Livingstone 1984: 181).
Nationalism found outlets in the pursuit of glory and empire. Ideology and
economics would work hand in hand to this end. The transformation of the
creed of nationalism from a progressive liberal to a conservative creed has also
been partly explained by some as one of the eVects of the economic depression
that took place after 1873. Economic expansion became more diYcult be-
cause of overproduction and the reduction of proWts. New markets were
required to overcome the crisis and the colonies would provide them. The
colonial expansion of Europe, Euro-America (and of Japan) intensiWed in
the period with which this chapter is mainly concerned, from the 1860s to the
1890s, and would continue until the First World War. As explained in Part III
Evolutionism and Positivism 373