In polite society you don't call yourself a nationalist. At most you might call yourself a patriot, although even this will often be viewed with some suspicion in sufficiently liberal company. Nationalism at worst conjures images of the fascists of the early 20th century, although maybe more commonly is associated with white nationalist thugs. At best it might be associated with the struggles for independence of the colonised peoples in the mid 20th century.
This is the first of the series of post that aims to contextualise nationalism as one of the fundamental structures of modernism along with states, markets and science and make the case that the liberal-left, and more specifically the British Labour Party, should construct an inclusive, liberal nationalism rather than cede this ground to the right.
The air we breathe
What country are you from?
The fact that you (probably) have a simple and unambiguous answer to that question is historically novel. The vast majority of the world only began to be able to answer that question after the first world war and often much later after gaining national independence from European powers, struggles which created national identities as much as were caused by them.
Almost everyone accepts that they are citizens of a continuous political entity defined by constant territorial borders, or maybe a constant constitution. It seems natural that we have a special say over the direction of our country and not others, and natural that it is our country's government, and not local elites, or a religious authority, or someone far away that our town is a vassal of, that we pay taxes to. It would be extremely strange if our countries leaders decided unilaterally that one’s country should be part of another but this was an extremely common occurrence for much of history that no one batted an eyelid over. Royal families regularly merged their territories by marriage, inheritance or war and, as I will get to later, it is against this royal arbitrariness that nationalism was first explicitly deployed in 19th century Europe.
The nationalism that we all accept is that the concept of being part of a country exists and that it’s natural that political power is perfectly continuous with that country, indeed almost unimaginable that it could be any other way. This is maybe best highlighted by the relatively small number of places in the modern world where political power and national identity cleave apart. The European Union shows the contours of nationalism like almost no other institution. The European Union is interesting because it has real, legal power. It makes laws that, ultimately, people with guns will enforce. Yet almost no one identifies as European and this is what marks it out as a non-nationalist political institution. Nationalism though is deeply embedded enough that the majority of the EU’s power comes via the agreement of countries' leaders. The EU does have elections but they matter relatively little because almost no European accepts the EU as a national body. The relevant unit is not the citizenry of Europe as a whole as would be implied if EU law was determined primarily by majority vote in Europe, the relevant units are the different states and so EU law is mostly decided by agreement between different countries acting as counties.
Classical nationalism
Like much else in modern politics, nationalism as we know it today is traditionally thought of as starting with the French revolution (although this is a heavily disputed view.) Prior to the French revolution if you were a French peasant outside of Paris the France was an extremely hazy concept. The local nobility was able to set law, had judicial authority and a claim on your labour. The Church had the legal power to tax you and the Church was ultimately loyal to the Vatican. The Church also provided basic social services like primary education, which was delivered in a language that was not that same as the language spoken in Paris. This is a picture not only of oppression but also of one where the political authority is separate from national identity insofar as that existed.
The French revolution changed all this. By making priests and bishops state employees it challenged the idea and practice of political power exercised by a body outside the territory of the state. It ended the legal power of the nobility and made the King of France the King of the French. This is an important distinction. As King of France, the King derived his legitimacy from the land being in some sense his property. As King of the French his legitimacy came from the French people. This is a nationalist concept. Unlike power of land which can be transferred as the King sees fit, the King of the French is concept tied to the French people. In this way it fuses national identity and political legitimacy.
But it didn’t just change it by fusing political power and national identity - it created the national identity. By the late 18th century France had more of a national identity than almost anywhere else in the world bar England, the Netherlands and the United States. It had existed with roughly the same borders ruled by roughly the same royal family for centuries, and in the person of the King there as embodiment of French national identity. Yet for the French peasant France probably didn’t exist as a concept, and if it did it was extremely hazy. The peasants were cut off from other parts of France geographically (roads were extremely poor), linguistically (most did not speak Parisian French) and politically (their local lord was the most important political force in their life.) The French revolution changed this. Just by existing it created a clear national identity for France, an identity enforced by the opposition of the rest of Europe, and more practically via primary education created a populous that all spoke the same language and were literate enough that many were able to participate in a shared conversion limited by language to the French. It also for the first time created a state that had a meaningful effect on lots of peoples lives. Napoleon was probably the principal architect of this with the establishment of the nation under arms in his expansionary wars and a single legal code.
I’ve gone into this much depth to try to emphasise how contingent and relatively new the concept of a national state is. I found this idea quite unintuitive when I first encountered it, which I think shows quite nicely how nationalism for me at least was so ubiquitous it seemed like the natural order of things.
A liberal force
When classical nationalism emerged in the 19th century it was a liberal (in the British sense) and deeply anti-monarchical force. Nationalism was a challenge to the monarchies of Europe even when there wasn’t the substantial linguistic or religious differences within the territory the crown ruled. Nationalism was a challenge to the legitimacy of monarchy because it claimed that legitimate political power was connected to the people ruled in some way. During the 19th century probably the most famous exponents of this liberal nationalism were the Italian revolutionaries Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi weren’t just trying to unify Italy they wanted to overthrow the monarchies and establish democratic republics.
Mazzini and Garibaldi were members of Young Italy, a secret revolutionary society. These societies sprung up all across Europe. The most famous of those today is the Socialist Sinn Fien, the Irish main Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland and the third largest party in Ireland. The socialist connection, which was also prominent in Young Italy, comes from the idea of a national people as the legitimising force behind government which naturally lends itself to other egalitarian politcal positions.
But if nationalism was a challenge in linguistically homogeneous kingdoms ruled by monarchs who spoke the same language as their subjects, it was an existential threat to the multinational empires of Europe. The Austrian Empire and Ottoman empires were the states most threatened by this as their national cores, Austria and Anatolia, were the smallest as a proportion of land area of any European state, followed by the Russian Empire. Nationalism was less straightforwardly liberal in these places as compared to Ireland or Italy. It was straightforwardly anti-conservative - it was against empires and supporting revolution - it was not necessarily anti-aristocratic or egalitarian. In Hungary and Poland nationalism was led by nobility who had no intention of giving up their local power to make way for an administratively egalitarian state, unlike in France where nationalism was at its core a movement towards an administratively egalitarian state.
I’m going to end part 1 here. In these parts I’ll draw out the connection between nationalism and state formation, and start to trace the roots of the uglier nationalism that became prominent in the 20th century. This has been a very pro nationalism article that hasn’t looked into the darker sides of even the liberal nationalism of France, Ireland and Italy. This is a core part of nationalism as a force and the case I’m making for the construction of a new liberal nationalism will have to contend with .I’ll also have a look at a alternative view of nationalism, one which sees it as much older than the French revolution.
As a final note, this post was heavily influenced by Eric Hobsbawn wonderful long 19th century trilogy.
I am one of those by-default nationalism-skeptic cosmopolitan liberals. But that is good to know this far rosier history of nationalism - I suppose for me nationalism looks bad because it is parochial and exclusionary in comparison with globalism, but yes compared to local elites and authoritarian empires it is rather good!
Oscar
(populace not populous ;) annoying how they are pronounced the same but are different parts of speech!)