5th November 2002
Philip Moisson
‘Progress’ in World politics week, sub-theme #4
· State formation in Europe
· French Revolution; the nation-state
· Wars and precedents set
· Theoretical Interlude; Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson
· Historical developments in the theory and practice of ‘nation’
· End of WWII; Third-world struggles, Partha Chatterjee’s thesis
· The unfinished agenda of revolution?
The state and the nation. Separable?
Medieval ir? Modern ir?
Overlapping tangled map changed to clearly demarcated map of political sovereigns.
Absolutism and State Formation in Europe
Preponderance of coercive force during this phase is changed from that held by noble-lords at village level to a militarised summit at state, or ‘national’ level. The nation in its own right is virtually non-existent at this time, and ‘national’ forces are merely ‘state’ forces. Note however, up to two-thirds of any given ‘national’ army would comprise of foreign mercenaries.
The French Revolution:
Accounts which focus on the internal, ideologically inspired motivations of the French revolution can’t be separated from a more state-centred approach that emphasises the rationalisation, bureaucratisation and increasing centralisation of state power in France.
2 dominant schools of thought discernible last 30-40 years
1. ‘Social interpretation’ of Lefebvre, Soboul, and others stressing an emphasis on the bourgeois revolution overthrowing a feudal Regime
2. ‘Revisionist’ interpretations of Cobban, Furet and others, rejecting the idea that a bourgeois revolution occurred in France (claiming France no longer feudal) and emphasising a movement towards liberty.
Enlightenment inspired notions of national liberation. But also occurring very much in the context of French international decline.
Pre-revolution, can highlight:
-French monarchy losing all but 1 of the intra-European wars they were involved in during the eighteenth century. The one they were victorious in (over Britain during the US wars of independence) sent them into a practically irreversible state of bankruptcy. [note king and patrie 2 different things]
-2/3 of the Monarchy’s spending was taken up by military needs, and the Monarchy’s expenditure was 20% more than their income.
-At the other end, peasants (at least 80% of the populous) having the life squeezed out of them in dues, combined with rising prices, inflation and poor harvests.
Various famous events
‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ 1789, principle that, ‘the aim of all political association is to preserve the natural and imprescriptible rights of man’
The nation as the source of all sovereignty?
Rhetoric of national regeneration with ideology centred around the nation and bringing the modern meaning of nationalism. Initial intention more broadly of universal emancipation of the oppressed.
Combined however, was the ‘unshackling’ of a state’s ability to wage war.
1793 ‘leveé en masse’, conscription for all material and human national resources and the accompanying notion that ‘every citizen ought to be a soldier and every soldier a citizen’. Onset of Total War.
Marauding French armies under Napoleon very successful. Wars contradicting principles of revolution.
Ideological precedent that a ‘state’ should represent a ‘nation’.
[Also note American Revolution- although its international consequences less immediately pronounced]
Theoretical Interlude
Separating out the important developments associated with the national-era.
Incredible disagreement!
Ernest Gellner, ‘Nations and Nationalism’
Nationalism found with the transition form agrarian to modern societies characteristic of this period. It involves the spread of standardised high-cultures.
Defines nationalism as, “Primarily a political principle which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent.”
Sees nationalism as arising when the state is in place. “The existence of politically centralized units, and of a moral-political climate in which such centralized units are taken for granted and are treated as normative, is a necessary though by no means a sufficient condition of nationalism.”
Sees developments in the division of labour as creating a need for a ‘literate sophisticated high culture’, and some sort of concept of mutually shared generic skills.
Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Nations and Nationalism since 1780’
Word no older than eighteenth century [original meaning of word is ‘to be born’]
Can’t find criteria to define satisfactorily what, on its own, a nation is, as different to other human collectivities.
Can’t be defined objectively; ie through exclusive language or ethnicity, or common history, common territory or even common cultural traits. There are always too many exceptions.
And states rather impatiently, “How on earth could it be otherwise, given that we are trying to fit historically novel, emerging, changing and, even today, far from universal entities into a framework of permanence and universality.”
A nation also can’t be defined subjectively, in terms of the consciousness of its members, as to do so would suppose that all a nation needs is the will to become one.
Terms used widely and imprecisely for Hobsbawm.
Hobsbawm also links nation to modern-state, and top-down constructions.
And points to phase when nations gained mass support as a crucial one, although this era is now past its heyday.
Benedict Anderson, ‘Imagined Communities’
Seminal work,
Claim from the outset, “The reality is quite plain: the ‘end of the era of nationalism’, so long prophesied, is not remotely in sight.”
Nations, nationality and nationalism are particular, cultural artefacts.
Imagined community thesis following Marx although in a Weberian spirit. All communities above village level must be imaginatively constructed.
Borne of large cultural systems that predated it, as well as developments such as the emergence of print-capitalism and the moves towards standardisation of national languages. Also important is a changing experience of time.
Pre modern notions of time didn’t radically separate past and present, simultaneity the dominant experience. Then, in modern time, homogenous ‘empty-time’ measured by clock and calendar, - concept of ‘meanwhile’ worth having in mind
“The idea of a sociological organism moving calendrically through homogenous, empty time is a precise analogue of the idea of the nation, which also is conceived as a solid community moving steadily down (or up) history.” (in a recent article- see bibliography)
This transformation of previously religious notions of continuity in time, especially in linking the individuals and units with eternity (or a longing for immortality) is vital to understanding why more people have died for the nation than any other entity in history. !!
Also vital to changes in time is the bias involved in nationally written history- imagining that the history of a particular nation can be traced back through ‘time immemorial’. Our relationship to the past has for Anderson, been altered, and, “this means that are relationship to the past is today far more political, ideological, contested, fragmentary, and even opportunistic than in ages gone by.”
Heavily linked is print-capitalism and the newspaper- bringing vital news one day that is ‘obsolete’ the next. He compares reading of newspaper, silently, in head, to the saying of morning prayers- seeing others do the same allows the imagined community into reality.
Emphasises these factors ahead of state formation.
In a recent article, “The accelerating speed with which social, cultural, economic and political change took hold, motored by the industrial revolution and modern communications systems, made the nation the first political-moral form which based itself firmly on the idea of progress.”
Historical Developments up to WWII
Summary of an article by Perry Anderson
[Since our field is IR, it is interesting to note the following seemingly obvious point- that ‘Internationalism’ itself requires logically, some previous notion of ‘nationalism’.]
-At the time of the late eighteenth century birth of nationalism, ‘Patriotism’ of the popular masses was, as above, an enlightenment inspired idea with the associated universalising tendency of liberating all oppressed peoples through collective will.
-Through military expansionism, this is largely corrupted, and produces antagonistic, conservative led reactions in many states. Nationalism arises in a manner distinct from Patriotism, with propertied classes aiming to form their own states in an ‘increasingly industrialised world’. c.1830s-1870s.
-This is beginning to alter again from around about 1860, where staunch nationalism [chauvinism] is the discourse in the leading industrial states. Associated with a ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality, and a more ethnic idea of the nation. Increasing hostility to other nations in a more general way. [outbreak of WWI enthusiastically welcomed by many- high jingoism]
-End WWI, crisis, depression, concentration of capital increasingly in hands of a few, and the nation was overtly defined as a biological community. [Interwar years]
-After WWII, although nationalism had traditionally been associated with propertied classes, and from the nineteenth century onwards internationalism was explicitly the domain of workers struggles, things here change.
‘Capital’ becomes largely international
And nationalism is now associated with anti-colonial movements.
Third World Struggles
Partha Chatterjee raises the key questions of imperialism and colonial domination.
Described nationalism outside Europe as a ‘derivative discourse’, hindering autonomous development through its application by self-serving ‘nationalist’ politicians.
Claims that the emancipatory aspects of nationalism were very much sidelined.
Any by the 70s, nationalism largely comprised of ethnic politics and was a reason for violent conflict.
Leaders of supposed national liberation heading brutal regimes.
Furthermore; if European nationalism has led to the necessity to accept these ‘modular’ forms throughout the rest of the world, where’s the liberation?
For Chatterjee, anti-colonial nationalism enters a contest for political power. There are two distinct domains, the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’.
The ‘material’ realm is made up of the economy, statecraft, science and technology, and Western superiority in these realms is largely imposed as a model to be emulated.
The ‘spiritual’ however is the inner domain of cultural identity, and, powerfully put, “The greater one’s success in imitating Western skills in the material domain, therefore, the greater the need to preserve the distinctiveness of one’s spiritual culture.”
Post WWII nationalisms claim this domain as sovereign, as far as is possible, although it is inseparable from the material sphere.
The unfinished agenda of revolution?
Importance of supra-national institutions such as the EU?
Nationalism nearing end?
But as quite deep-rooted changes brought the nation in, surely similar such powerful changes will be needed to take it out again. (basis of democracy already far from political power. Marx too worth mentioning, as a theory of the modern state is advanced whereby the dissolution of civil society into formally equal individuals is accompanied by the abstract construction of political realm of the general interest- somehow superimposed above and beyond the real differences and inequalities between the states members. As inspired Anderson, the imagined community of the nation often glosses over many internally reproduced inequalities.)
As Fred Halliday puts it on the ‘unfinished agenda’, “revolutions are pertinent to the future whether they continue to occur or not.”
The current political system was a product of revolutions, and it is a straightforward fact of history that often things change in ways almost inconceivable to those living at the time.
We can’t overlook the present disparities of wealth both in and between nations and pretend that human beings will remain in passive acceptance of this.
Bibliography
Anderson, B., ‘Imagined Communities’, 2nd Edition, Verso, London, 1991
Anderson, B., ‘Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism’, New Left Review, May/June, 2001
Anderson, P., ‘Internationalism: A Breviary’, New Left Review, March/April 2002
Anderson, P., ‘Lineages of the Absolutist State’, NLB, London, 1974
Balakrishnan, G. (ed), ‘Mapping the Nation’, Verso, London, 1996
Chaterjee, P., ‘Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse’, Zed Books, London, 1986
Feher, F., ‘The French Revolution and the Birth of Modernity’, Berkeley, 1990
Halliday, F., ‘Revolution and the International System; the rise and fall of the sixth great power’, London, 1999
Hobsbawm, E., ‘Age of Revolution’, Abacus, London, 1962
Hobsbawm, E., ‘Nations and Nationalism since 1780’, Cambridge Uni, 1990