history essay nationalism

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World History Project - Origins to the Present

Course: world history project - origins to the present   >   unit 6.

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Origins and Impacts of Nationalism

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Nationalism

The term “nationalism” is generally used to describe two phenomena:

• the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and
• the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) self-determination.

(1) raises questions about the concept of a nation (or national identity), which is often defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and specifically about whether an individual’s membership in a nation should be regarded as non-voluntary or voluntary. (2) raises questions about whether self-determination must be understood as involving having full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less is required.

Nationalism came into the focus of philosophical debate three decades ago, in the nineties, partly in consequence of rather spectacular and troubling nationalist clashes. Surges of nationalism tend to present a morally ambiguous, and for this reason often fascinating, picture. “National awakening” and struggles for political independence are often both heroic and cruel; the formation of a recognizably national state often responds to deep popular sentiment but sometimes yields inhuman consequences, from violent expulsion and “cleansing” of non-nationals to organized mass murder. The moral debate on nationalism reflects a deep moral tension between solidarity with oppressed national groups on the one hand and repulsion in the face of crimes perpetrated in the name of nationalism on the other. Moreover, the issue of nationalism points to a wider domain of problems related to the treatment of ethnic and cultural differences within democratic polity, arguably among the most pressing problems of contemporary political theory.

In the last two decades, migration crisis and the populist reactions to migration and domestic economic issues have been the defining traits of a new political constellation. The traditional issue of the contrast between nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous, or simply just, attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. The populist aversion inherits some features traditionally associated with patriotism and nationalism, and the opposite attitude the main features of traditional cosmopolitanism. One could expect that the work on nationalism will be moving further on this new and challenging playground, addressing the new contrast and trying to locate nationalism in relation to it.

In this entry, we shall first present conceptual issues of definition and classification (Sections 1 and 2) and then the arguments put forward in the debate (Section 3), dedicating more space to the arguments in favor of nationalism than to those against it in order to give the philosophical nationalist a proper hearing. In the last part we shall turn to the new constellation and sketch the new issues raised by nationalist and trans-nationalist populisms and the migration crisis.

1.1 The Basic Concept of Nationalism

1.2 the concept of a nation, 2.1 concepts of nationalism: classical and liberal, 2.2 moral claims, classical vs. liberal: the centrality of nation, 3.1 classical and liberal nationalisms, 3.2 arguments in favor of nationalism, classical vs. liberal: the deep need for community, 3.3 arguments in favor of nationalism: issues of justice, 3.4 populism and a new face of nationalism, 3.5 nation-state in global context, 4. conclusion, introduction, other internet resources, related entries, 1. what is a nation.

Although the term “nationalism” has a variety of meanings, it centrally encompasses two phenomena: (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their identity as members of that nation and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take in seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty (see for example, Nielsen 1998–9: 9). Each of these aspects requires elaboration.

• raises questions about the concept of a nation or national identity, about what it is to belong to a nation, and about how much one ought to care about one’s nation. Nations and national identity may be defined in terms of common origin, ethnicity, or cultural ties, and while an individual’s membership in the nation is often regarded as involuntary, it is sometimes regarded as voluntary. The degree of care for one’s nation that nationalists require is often, but not always, taken to be very high: according to such views, the claims of one’s nation take precedence over rival contenders for authority and loyalty. [ 1 ]
• raises questions about whether sovereignty requires the acquisition of full statehood with complete authority over domestic and international affairs, or whether something less than statehood suffices. Although sovereignty is often taken to mean full statehood (Gellner 1983: ch. 1), [ 2 ] possible exceptions have been recognized (Miller 1992: 87; Miller 2000). Some authors even defend an anarchist version of patriotism-moderate nationalism foreshadowed by Bakunin (see Sparrow 2007).

There is a terminological and conceptual question of distinguishing nationalism from patriotism. A popular proposal is the contrast between attachment to one’s country as defining patriotism and attachment to one’s people and its traditions as defining nationalism (Kleinig 2014: 228, and Primoratz 2017: Section 1.2). One problem with this proposal is that love for a country is not really just love of a piece of land but normally involves attachment to the community of its inhabitants, and this introduces “nation” into the conception of patriotism. Another contrast is the one between strong, and somewhat aggressive attachment (nationalism) and a mild one (patriotism), dating back at least to George Orwell (see his 1945 essay). [ 3 ]

Despite these definitional worries, there is a fair amount of agreement about the classical, historically paradigmatic form of nationalism. It typically features the supremacy of the nation’s claims over other claims to individual allegiance and full sovereignty as the persistent aim of its political program. Territorial sovereignty has traditionally been seen as a defining element of state power and essential for nationhood. It was extolled in classic modern works by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau and is returning to center stage in the debate, though philosophers are now more skeptical (see below). Issues surrounding the control of the movement of money and people (in particular immigration) and the resource rights implied in territorial sovereignty make the topic politically central in the age of globalization and philosophically interesting for nationalists and anti-nationalists alike.

In recent times, the philosophical focus has moved more in the direction of “liberal nationalism”, the view that mitigates the classical claims and tries to bring together the pro-national attitude and the respect for traditional liberal values. For instance, the territorial state as political unit is seen by classical nationalists as centrally “belonging” to one ethnic-cultural group and as actively charged with protecting and promulgating its traditions. The liberal variety allows for “sharing” of the territorial state with non-dominant ethnic groups. Consequences are varied and quite interested (for more see below, especially section 2.1 ).

In its general form, the issue of nationalism concerns the mapping between the ethno-cultural domain (featuring ethno-cultural groups or “nations”) and the domain of political organization. In breaking down the issue, we have mentioned the importance of the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity. This point raises two sorts of questions. First, the descriptive ones:

Second, the normative ones:

This section discusses the descriptive questions, starting with (1a) and (1b) ;the normative questions are addressed in Section 3 on the moral debate. If one wants to enjoin people to struggle for their national interests, one must have some idea about what a nation is and what it is to belong to a nation. So, in order to formulate and ground their evaluations, claims, and directives for action, pro-nationalist thinkers have expounded theories of ethnicity, culture, nation, and state. Their opponents have in turn challenged these elaborations. Now, some presuppositions about ethnic groups and nations are essential for the nationalist, while others are theoretical elaborations designed to support the essential ones. The definition and status of the social group that benefits from the nationalist program, variously called the “nation”, “ethno-nation”, or “ethnic group”, is essential. Since nationalism is particularly prominent with groups that do not yet have a state, a definition of nation and nationalism purely in terms of belonging to a state is a non-starter.

Indeed, purely “civic” loyalties are often categorized separately under the title “patriotism”, which we already mentioned, or “constitutional patriotism”. [ 4 ] This leaves two extreme options and a number of intermediates. The first extreme option has been put forward by a small but distinguished band of theorists. [ 5 ] According to their purely voluntaristic definition, a nation is any group of people aspiring to a common political state-like organization. If such a group of people succeeds in forming a state, the loyalties of the group members become “civic” (as opposed to “ethnic”) in nature. At the other extreme, and more typically, nationalist claims are focused upon the non-voluntary community of common origin, language, tradition, and culture: the classic ethno-nation is a community of origin and culture, including prominently a language and customs. The distinction is related (although not identical) to that drawn by older schools of social and political science between “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism, the former being allegedly Western European and the latter more Central and Eastern European, originating in Germany. [ 6 ] Philosophical discussions centered on nationalism tend to concern the ethnic-cultural variants only, and this habit will be followed here. A group aspiring to nationhood on this basis will be called an “ethno-nation” to underscore its ethno-cultural rather than purely civic underpinnings. For the ethno-(cultural) nationalist it is one’s ethnic-cultural background that determines one’s membership in the community. One cannot choose to be a member; instead, membership depends on the accident of origin and early socialization. However, commonality of origin has become mythical for most contemporary candidate groups: ethnic groups have been mixing for millennia.

Sophisticated, liberal pro-nationalists therefore tend to stress cultural membership only and speak of “nationality”, omitting the “ethno-” part (Miller 1992, 2000; Tamir 1993,2013; Gans 2003). Michel Seymour’s proposal of a “socio-cultural definition” adds a political dimension to the purely cultural one: a nation is a cultural group, possibly but not necessarily united by a common descent, endowed with civic ties (Seymour 2000). This is the kind of definition that would be accepted by most parties in the debate today. So defined, the nation is a somewhat mixed category, both ethno-cultural and civic, but still closer to the purely ethno-cultural than to the purely civic extreme.

Let us now turn to the issue of the origin and “authenticity” of ethno-cultural groups or ethno-nations. In social and political science one usually distinguishes two kinds of views, but there is a third group, combining element from both. The first are modernist views that see nationalism as born in modern times, together with nation-states. [ 7 ] In our times the view was pioneered by Ernst Gellner (see his 1983). [ 8 ] Other modernist choose similar starting points with century or two of variation. [ 9 ] The opposite view can be called, following Edward Shils (1957) “primordialist”. According to it, actual ethno-cultural nations have either existed “since time immemorial”.

The third, quite plausible kind of view, distinct from both primordialism-ethno-symbolism and modernism, has been initiated by W. Connor (1994). [ 10 ] A nation is a politicized and mobilized ethnic group rather than a state. So, the origins of nationalism predate the modern state, and its emotional content remains up to our times (Conversi 2002: 270), but the actual statist organization is, indeed, modern. However, nation-state is a nationalist dream and fiction, never really implemented, due to the inescapable plurality of social groups. So much for the three dominant perspectives on the origin of nationalism.

Indeed, the older authors—from great thinkers like Herder and Otto Bauer to the propagandists who followed their footsteps—took great pains to ground normative claims upon firm ontological realism about nations: nations are real, bona fide entities. However, the contemporary moral debate has tried to diminish the importance of the imagined/real divide. Prominent contemporary philosophers have claimed that normative-evaluative nationalist claims are compatible with the “imagined” nature of a nation. [ 11 ] They point out that common imaginings can tie people together, and that actual interaction resulting from togetherness can engender important moral obligations.

Let us now turn to question (1c) about the nature of pro-national attitudes. The explanatory issue that has interested political and social scientists concerns ethno-nationalist sentiment, the paradigm case of a pro-national attitude. Is it as irrational, romantic, and indifferent to self-interest as it might seem on the surface? The issue has divided authors who see nationalism as basically irrational and those who try to explain it as being in some sense rational. Authors who see it as irrational propose various explanations of why people assent to irrational views. Some say, critically, that nationalism is based on “false consciousness”. But where does such false consciousness come from? The most simplistic view is that it is a result of direct manipulation of “masses” by “elites”. On the opposite side, the famous critic of nationalism Elie Kedourie (1960) thinks this irrationality is spontaneous. A decade and a half ago Liah Greenfeld went as far as linking nationalism to mental illness in her provocative 2005 article (see also her 2006 book). On the opposite side, Michael Walzer has offered a sympathetic account of nationalist passion in his 2002. Authors relying upon the Marxist tradition offer various deeper explanations. To mention one, the French structuralist Étienne Balibar sees it as a result of the “production” of ideology effectuated by mechanisms which have nothing to do with spontaneous credulity of individuals, but with impersonal, structural social factors (Balibar & Wallerstein 1988 [1991]). [ 12 ]

Some authors claim that it is often rational for individuals to become nationalists (Hardin 1985). Can one rationally explain the extremes of ethno-national conflict? Authors like Russell Hardin propose to do so in terms of a general view of when hostile behavior is rational: most typically, if an individual has no reason to trust someone, it is reasonable for that individual to take precautions against the other. If both sides take precautions, however, each will tend to see the other as increasingly inimical. It then becomes rational to start treating the other as an enemy. Mere suspicion can thus lead by small, individually rational steps to a situation of conflict. (Such negative development is often presented as a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma; see the entry on prisoner’s dilemma ). It is relatively easy to spot the circumstances in which this general pattern applies to national solidarities and conflicts (see also Wimmer 2013).

Finally, as for question (1d) , the nation is typically seen as an essentially non-voluntary community to which one belongs by birth and early nurture and such that the belonging is enhanced and made more complete by one’s additional conscious endorsement. Not everyone agrees: liberal nationalists accept the idea of choice of one’s national belonging and of possibility for immigrants to become nationals by choice and intentional acculturation.

2. Varieties of Nationalism

We pointed out at the very beginning of the entry that nationalism focuses upon (1) the attitude that the members of a nation have when they care about their national identity, and (2) the actions that the members of a nation take when seeking to achieve (or sustain) some form of political sovereignty. The politically central point is (2): the actions enjoined by the nationalist. To these we now turn, beginning with sovereignty and territory, the usual foci of a national struggle for independence. They raise an important issue:

The classical answer is that a state is required. A more liberal answer is that some form of political autonomy suffices. Once this has been discussed, we can turn to the related normative issues:

Consider first the classical nationalist answer to (2a) . Political sovereignty requires a state “rightfully owned” by the ethno-nation (Oldenquist 1997). Developments of this line of thought often state or imply specific answers to (2b) , and (2c) , i.e., that in a national independence struggle the use of force against the threatening central power is almost always a legitimate means for bringing about sovereignty. However, classical nationalism is not only concerned with the creation of a state but also with its maintenance and strengthening.

Classical nationalism is the political program that sees the creation and maintenance of a fully sovereign state owned by a given ethno-national group (“people” or “nation”) as a primary duty of each member of the group. Starting from the assumption that the appropriate (or “natural”) unit of culture is an ethno-nation, it claims that a primary duty of each member is to abide by one’s recognizably ethno-national culture in all cultural matters.

Classical nationalists are usually vigilant about the kind of culture they protect and promote and about the kind of attitude people have to their nation-state. This watchful attitude carries some potential dangers: many elements of a given culture that are universal or simply not recognizably national may fall prey to such nationalist enthusiasms. Classical nationalism in everyday life puts various additional demands on individuals, from buying more expensive home-produced goods in preference to cheaper imported ones to procreating as many future members of the nation as one can manage (see Yuval-Davies 1997, and Yack 2012).

Besides classical nationalism (and its more radical extremist cousins), various moderate views are also now classified as nationalist. Indeed, the philosophical discussion has shifted to these moderate or even ultra-moderate forms, and most philosophers who describe themselves as nationalists propose very moderate nationalist programs.

Nationalism in this wider sense is any complex of attitudes, claims, and directives for action ascribing a fundamental political, moral, and cultural value to nation and nationality and deriving obligations (for individual members of the nation, and for any involved third parties, individual or collective) from this ascribed value. The main representative of this group of views is liberal nationalism , proposed by authors like Miller, Tamir, and Gans (see below).

Nationalisms in this wider sense can vary somewhat in their conceptions of the nation (which are often left implicit in their discourse), in the grounds for and degree of its value, and in the scope of their prescribed obligations. Moderate nationalism is less demanding than classical nationalism and sometimes goes under the name of “patriotism.” (A different usage, again, reserves “patriotism” for valuing civic community and loyalty to state, in contrast to nationalism, centered on ethnic-cultural communities).

Let us now turn to liberal nationalism, the most discussed kind of moderate nationalism.

Liberal nationalists see liberal-democratic principles and pro-national attitudes as belonging together. One of the main proponents of the view, Yael Tamir, started the debate in her 1993 book and in her recent book talks about the nation-state as “an ideal meeting point between the two” (2019: 6). Of course, some things have to be sacrificed: we must acknowledge that either the meaningfulness of a community or its openness must be sacrificed to some extent as we cannot have them both. (2019: 57). How much of each is to give way is left open, and of course, various liberal nationalists take different views of what precisely the right answer is.

Tamir’s version of liberal nationalism is a kind of social liberalism, in this respect similar to the views of David Miller who talks about “solidaristic communities” in his 1999 book Principles of Social Justice and also takes stance in his 1995 and 2008 books. They both see the feeling of national identity as a feeling that promotes solidarity, and solidarity as means for increased social justice (Tamir 2019, in particular ch.20; compare Walzer 1983, Kymlicka 1995a, 2001, and Gans 2003, 2008).

Liberal nationalists diverge about the value of multiculturalism. Kymlicka takes it as basic for his picture of liberalism while Tamir dismisses it without much ado: multicultural, multiethnic democracies have a very poor track record, she claims (2019: 62). Tamir’s diagnosis of the present day political crisis, with politicians like Trump and Le Pen coming to the forefront, is that “liberal democrats were paralyzed by their assumed victory” whereas “nationalists felt defeated and obsolete” (2019: 7).

Tamir lists two kinds of reasons that guarantee special political status to nations. First kind, that no other political entity “is more able than the state to promote ideas in the public sphere” (2019: 52), and the second kind that nation needs continuous creative effort to make it functional and attractive.

The historical development of liberalism turned it into a universalistic, anti-communitarian principle; this has been a fatal mistake that can be and should be corrected by the liberal nationalist synthesis. Can we revive the unifying narratives of our nationality without sacrificing the liberal inheritance of freedom and rights? Liberal nationalism answers in the affirmative. From its standpoint, national particularism has primacy: “The love of humanity is a noble ideal, but real love is always particular…” (2019: 68).

Interestingly, Tamir combines this high regard of nation with an extreme constructivist view of its nature: nations are mental structures that exist in the minds of their members (2019: 58).

Is liberal nationalism implemented anywhere in the present world, or is it more of an ideal, probably end-state theory, that proposes a picture of a desirable society? Judging by the writings of liberal nationalists, it is the latter, although presented as a relatively easily reachable ideal, combining two traditions that are already well implemented in political reality.

The variations of nationalism most relevant for philosophy are those that influence the moral standing of claims and of recommended nationalist practices. The elaborate philosophical views put forward in favor of nationalism will be referred to as “theoretical nationalism”, the adjective serving to distinguish such views from less sophisticated and more practical nationalist discourse. The central theoretical nationalist evaluative claims can be charted on the map of possible positions within political theory in the following useful but somewhat simplified and schematic way.

Nationalist claims featuring the nation as central to political action must answer two crucial general questions. First, is there one kind of large social group that is of special moral importance? The nationalist answer is that there certainly is one, namely, the nation. Moreover, when an ultimate choice is to be made, say between ties of family, or friendship, and the nation, the latter has priority. Liberal nationalists prefer a more moderate stance, which ascribes value to national belonging, but don’t make it central in this way. Second, what are the grounds for an individual’s obligations to the morally central group? Are they based on voluntary or involuntary membership in the group? The typical contemporary nationalist thinker opts for the latter, while admitting that voluntary endorsement of one’s national identity is a morally important achievement. On the philosophical map, pro-nationalist normative tastes fit nicely with the communitarian stance in general: most pro-nationalist philosophers are communitarians who choose the nation as the preferred community (in contrast to those of their fellow communitarians who prefer more far-ranging communities, such as those defined by global religious traditions). [ 13 ]

Before proceeding to moral claims, let us briefly sketch the issues and viewpoints connected to territory and territorial rights that are essential for nationalist political programs. [ 14 ] Why is territory important for ethno-national groups, and what are the extent and grounds of territorial rights? Its primary importance resides in sovereignty and all the associated possibilities for internal control and external exclusion. Add to this the Rousseauian view that political attachments are essentially bounded and that love —or, to put it more mildly, republican civil friendship—for one’s group requires exclusion of some “other”, and the importance becomes quite obvious. What about the grounds for the demand for territorial rights? Nationalist and pro-nationalist views mostly rely on the attachment that members of a nation have to national territory and to the formative value of territory for a nation to justify territorial claims (see Miller 2000 and Meisels 2009). This is similar in some respects to the rationale given by proponents of indigenous peoples’ rights (Tully 2004, but see also Hendrix 2008) and in other respects to Kolers’ 2009 ethno-geographical non-nationalist theory, but differs in preferring ethno-national groups as the sole carriers of the right. These attachment views stand in stark contrast to more pragmatic views about territorial rights as means for conflict resolution (e.g., Levy 2000). Another quite popular alternative is the family of individualistic views grounding territorial rights in rights and interests of individuals. [ 15 ] On the extreme end of anti-nationalist views stands the idea of Pogge) that there are no specific territorial problems for political philosophy—the “dissolution approach”, as Kolers calls it.

We now pass to the normative dimension of nationalism. We shall first describe the very heart of the nationalist program, i.e., sketch and classify the typical normative and evaluative nationalist claims. These claims can be seen as answers to the normative subset of our initial questions about (1) pro-national attitudes and (2) actions.

We will see that these claims recommend various courses of action: centrally, those meant to secure and sustain a political organization for the given ethno-cultural national community (thereby making more specific the answers to our normative questions (1e) , (1f) , (2b) , and (2c) ). Further, they enjoin the community’s members to promulgate recognizable ethno-cultural contents as central features of the cultural life within such a state. Finally, we shall discuss various lines of pro-nationalist thought that have been put forward in defense of these claims. To begin, let us return to the claims concerning the furthering of the national state and culture. These are proposed by the nationalist as norms of conduct. The philosophically most important variations concern three aspects of such normative claims:

• The normative nature and strength of the claim: does it promote merely a right (say, to have and maintain a form of political self-government, preferably and typically a state, or have cultural life centered upon a recognizably ethno-national culture), or a moral obligation (to get and maintain one), or a moral, legal, and political obligation? The strongest claim is typical of classical nationalism; its typical norms are both moral and, once the nation-state is in place, legally enforceable obligations for all parties concerned, including for the individual members of the ethno-nation. A weaker but still quite demanding version speaks only of moral obligation (“sacred duty”).
• The strength of the nationalist claim in relation to various external interests and rights: to give a real example, is the use of the domestic language so important that even international conferences should be held in it, at the cost of losing the most interesting participants from abroad? The force of the nationalist claim is here being weighed against the force of other claims, including those of individual or group interests or rights. Variations in comparative strength of nationalist claims take place on a continuum between two extremes. At one rather unpalatable extreme, nation-focused claims take precedence over any other claims, including over human rights. Further towards the center is the classical nationalism that gives nation-centered claims precedence over individual interests and many needs, but not necessarily over general human rights (see, for example, MacIntyre 1994, Oldenquist 1997). On the opposite end, which is mild, humane, and liberal, the central classical nationalist claims are accorded prima facie status only (see Tamir 1993, Gans 2003, and Miller 2013; and for applications to Central Europe Stefan Auer 2004).

Universalizing nationalism is the political program that claims that every ethno-nation should have a state that it should rightfully own and the interests of which it should promote.

Alternatively, a claim may be particularistic, such as the claim “Group X ought to have a state”, where this implies nothing about any other group:

Particularistic nationalism is the political program claiming that some ethno-nation should have its state, without extending the claim to all ethno-nations. It claims thus either by omission (unreflective particularistic nationalism), or by explicitly specifying who is excluded: “Group X ought to have a state, but group Y should not” (invidious nationalism).

The most difficult and indeed chauvinistic sub-case of particularism, i.e., (B), has been called “invidious” since it explicitly denies the privilege of having a state to some peoples. Serious theoretical nationalists usually defend only the universalist variety, whereas the nationalist-in-the-street most often defends the egoistic indeterminate one.

The nationalist picture of morality traditionally has been quite close to the dominant view in the theory of international relations called “realism”. Put starkly, the view is that morality ends at the boundaries of the nation-state; beyond there is nothing but anarchy. [ 16 ] It nicely complements the main classical nationalist claim about the nation-state, i.e., that each ethno-nation or people should have a state of its own, and suggests what happens next: nation-states enter into competition in the name of their constitutive peoples.

3. The Moral Debate

Recall the initial normative question centered around (1) attitudes and (2) actions. Is national partiality justified, and to what extent? What actions are appropriate to bring about sovereignty? In particular, are ethno-national states and institutionally protected (ethno-) national cultures goods independent from the individual will of their members, and how far may one go in protecting them? The philosophical debate for and against nationalism is a debate about the moral validity of its central claims. In particular, the ultimate moral issue is the following: is any form of nationalism morally permissible or justified, and, if not, how bad are particular forms of it? [ 17 ] Why do nationalist claims require a defense? In some situations they seem plausible: for instance, the plight of some stateless national groups—the history of Jews and Armenians, the historical and contemporary misfortunes of Kurds—lends credence to the idea that having their own state would have solved the worst problems. Still, there are good reasons to examine nationalist claims more carefully. The most general reason is that it should first be shown that the political form of the nation-state has some value as such, that a national community has a particular, or even central, moral and political value, and that claims in its favor have normative validity. Once this is established, a further defense is needed. Some classical nationalist claims appear to clash—at least under normal circumstances of contemporary life—with various values that people tend to accept. Some of these values are considered essential to liberal-democratic societies, while others are important specifically for the flourishing of creativity and culture. The main values in the first set are individual autonomy and benevolent impartiality (most prominently towards members of groups culturally different from one’s own). The alleged special duties towards one’s ethno-national culture can and often do interfere with individuals’ right to autonomy.

Liberal nationalists are aware of the difficulties of the classical approach, and soften the classical claims, giving them only a prima facie status. They usually speak of “various accretions that have given nationalism a bad name”, and they are eager to “separate the idea of nationality itself from these excesses” (Miller 1992, 2000). Such thoughtful pro-nationalist writers have participated in an ongoing philosophical dialogue between proponents and opponents of the claim. [ 18 ] In order to help the reader find their through this involved debate, we shall briefly summarize the considerations which are open to the ethno-nationalist to defend their case (compare the useful overview in Lichtenberg 1997). Further lines of thought built upon these considerations can be used to defend very different varieties of nationalism, from radical to very moderate ones.

For brevity, each line of thought will be reduced to a brief argument; the actual debate is more involved than one can represent in a sketch. Some prominent lines of criticism that have been put forward in the debate will be indicated in brackets (see Miscevic 2001). The main arguments in favor of nationalism will be divided into two sets. The first set of arguments defends the claim that national communities have a high value, sometime seen as coming from the interests of their individual member (e.g., by Kymlicka, Miller, and Raz) and sometimes as non-instrumental and independent of the wishes and choices of their individual members, and argues that they should therefore be protected by means of state and official statist policies. The second set is less deeply “comprehensive”, and encompasses arguments from the requirements of justice, independent from substantial assumptions about culture and cultural values.

The first set will be presented in more detail since it has formed the core of the debate. It depicts the community as the source of value or as the transmission device connecting its members to some important values. For the classical nationalist, the arguments from this set are communitarian in a particularly “deep” sense since they are grounded in basic features of the human condition.

The general form of deep communitarian arguments is as follows. First, the communitarian premise: there is some uncontroversial good (e.g., a person’s identity), and some kind of community is essential for acquisition and preservation of it. Then comes the claim that the ethno-cultural nation is the kind of community ideally suited for this task. Then follows the statist conclusion: in order for such a community to preserve its own identity and support the identity of its members, it has to assume (always or at least normally) the political form of a state. The conclusion of this type of argument is that the ethno-national community has the right to an ethno-national state and the citizens of the state have the right and obligation to favor their own ethnic culture in relation to any other.

Although the deeper philosophical assumptions in the arguments stem from the communitarian tradition, weakened forms have also been proposed by more liberal philosophers. The original communitarian lines of thought in favor of nationalism suggest that there is some value in preserving ethno-national cultural traditions, in feelings of belonging to a common nation, and in solidarity between a nation’s members. A liberal nationalist might claim that these are not the central values of political life but are values nevertheless. Moreover, the diametrically opposing views, pure individualism and cosmopolitanism, do seem arid, abstract, and unmotivated by comparison. By cosmopolitanism we refer to moral and political doctrines claiming that

• one’s primary moral obligations are directed to all human beings (regardless of geographical or cultural distance), and
• political arrangements should faithfully reflect this universal moral obligation (in the form of supra-statist arrangements that take precedence over nation-states).

Confronted with opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, many philosophers opt for a mixture of liberalism-cosmopolitanism and patriotism-nationalism. In his writings, B. Barber glorifies “a remarkable mixture of cosmopolitanism and parochialism” that in his view characterizes American national identity (Barber 1996: 31). Charles Taylor claims that “we have no choice but to be cosmopolitan and patriots” (Taylor 1996: 121). Hilary Putnam proposes loyalty to what is best in the multiple traditions in which each of us participates, apparently a middle way between a narrow-minded patriotism and an overly abstract cosmopolitanism (Putnam 1996: 114). The compromise has been foreshadowed by Berlin (1979) and Taylor (1989, 1993), [ 19 ] and in the last two decades it has occupied center stage in the debate and even provoked re-readings of historical nationalism in its light. [ 20 ] Most liberal nationalist authors accept various weakened versions of the arguments we list below, taking them to support moderate or ultra-moderate nationalist claims.

Here are then the main weakenings of classical ethno-nationalism that liberal, limited-liberal, and cosmopolitan nationalists propose. First, ethno-national claims have only prima facie strength and cannot trump individual rights. Second, legitimate ethno-national claims do not in themselves automatically amount to the right to a state, but rather to the right to a certain level of cultural autonomy. The main models of autonomy are either territorial or non-territorial: the first involves territorial devolution; the second, cultural autonomy granted to individuals regardless of their domicile within the state. [ 21 ] Third, ethno-nationalism is subordinate to civic patriotism, which has little or nothing to do with ethnic criteria. Fourth, ethno-national mythologies and similar “important falsehoods” are to be tolerated only if benign and inoffensive, in which case they are morally permissible despite their falsity. Finally, any legitimacy that ethno-national claims may have is to be derived from choices the concerned individuals are free to make.

Consider now the particular pro-nationalist arguments from the first set. The first argument depends on assumptions that also appear in the subsequent ones, but it further ascribes to the community an intrinsic value. The later arguments point more towards an instrumental value of nation, derived from the value of individual flourishing, moral understanding, firm identity and the like.

• The Argument From Intrinsic Value . Each ethno-national community is valuable in and of itself since it is only within the natural encompassing framework of various cultural traditions that important meanings and values are produced and transmitted. The members of such communities share a special cultural proximity to each other. By speaking the same language and sharing customs and traditions, the members of these communities are typically closer to one another in various ways than they are to the outsiders.
• The Argument from Flourishing . The ethno-national community is essential for each of its members to flourish. In particular, it is only within such a community that an individual can acquire concepts and values crucial for understanding the community’s cultural life in general and the individual’s own life in particular. There has been much debate on the pro-nationalist side about whether divergence of values is essential for separateness of national groups.

The Canadian liberal nationalists Seymour (1999), Taylor, and Kymlicka pointed out that “divergences of value between different regions of Canada” that aspire to separate nationhood are “minimal”. Taylor (1993: 155) concluded that it is not separateness of value that matters.

• The Argument from Identity . Communitarian philosophers emphasize nurture over nature as the principal force determining our identity as people—we come to be who we are because of the social settings and contexts in which we mature. This claim certainly has some plausibility. The very identity of each person depends upon his/her participation in communal life (see MacIntyre 1994, Nielsen, 1998, and Lagerspetz 2000). Given that an individual’s morality depends upon their having a mature and stable personal identity, the communal conditions that foster the development of personal identity must be preserved and encouraged. Therefore, communal life should be organized around particular national cultures.
• The Argument from Moral Understanding . A particularly important variety of value is moral value. Some values are universal, e.g., freedom and equality, but these are too abstract and “thin”. The rich, “thick” moral values are discernible only within particular traditions; as Charles Taylor puts it, “the language we have come to accept articulates the issues of the good for us” (1989: 35). The nation offers a natural framework for moral traditions, and thereby for moral understanding; it is the primary school of morals.

The ‘physiognomies’ of cultures are unique: each presents a wonderful exfoliation of human potentialities in its own time and place and environment. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for that is measuring the incommensurable. (1976: 206)

Assuming that the (ethno-)nation is the natural unit of culture, the preservation of cultural diversity amounts to institutionally protecting the purity of (ethno-)national culture. The plurality of cultural styles can be preserved and enhanced by tying them to ethno-national “forms of life”.

David Miller has developed an interesting and sophisticated liberal pro-national stance over the course of decades from his work in 1990 to the most recent work in 2013. He accepts multicultural diversity within a society but stresses an overarching national identity, taking as his prime example British national identity, which encompasses the English, Scottish, and other ethnic identities. He demands an “inclusive identity, accessible to members of all cultural groups” (2013: 91). miller claims such identity is necessary for basic social solidarity, and it goes far beyond simple constitutional patriotism. A skeptic could note the following. The problem with multicultural society is that national identity has historically been a matter of ethno-national ties and has required sameness in the weighted majority of cultural traits (common language, common “history-as-remembered”, customs, religion and so on). However, multi-cultural states typically bring together groups with very different histories, languages, religions, and even quite contrasting appearances. Now, how is the overarching “national identity” to be achieved starting from the very thin identity of common belonging to a state? One seems to have a dilemma. Grounding social solidarity in national identity requires the latter to be rather thin and seems likely to end up as full-on, unitary cultural identity. Thick constitutional patriotism may be one interesting possible attitude that can ground such solidarity while preserving the original cultural diversity.

The arguments in the second set concern political justice and do not rely on metaphysical claims about identity, flourishing, and cultural values. They appeal to (actual or alleged) circumstances that would make nationalist policies reasonable (or permissible or even mandatory), such as (a) the fact that a large part of the world is organized into nation-states (so that each new group aspiring to create a nation-state just follows an established pattern), or (b) the circumstances of group self-defense or of redressing past injustice that might justify nationalist policies (to take a special case). Some of the arguments also present nationhood as conducive to important political goods, such as equality.

• The Argument from the Right to Collective Self-determination . A group of people of a sufficient size has a prima facie right to govern itself and decide its future membership, if the members of the group so wish. It is fundamentally the democratic will of the members themselves that grounds the right to an ethno-national state and to ethno-centric cultural institutions and practices. This argument presents the justification of (ethno-)national claims as deriving from the will of the members of the nation. It is therefore highly suitable for liberal nationalism but not appealing to a deep communitarian who sees the demands of the nation as independent from, and prior to, the choices of particular individuals. [ 22 ]
• The Argument from the Right to Self-defense and to Redress Past Injustices . Oppression and injustice give the victimized group a just cause and the right to secede. If a minority group is oppressed by the majority to the extent that almost every minority member is worse off than most members of the majority simply in virtue of belonging to the minority, then nationalist claims on behalf of the minority are morally plausible and potentially compelling. The argument establishes a typical remedial right, acceptable from a liberal standpoint (see the discussion in Kukathas and Poole 2000, also Buchanan 1991; for past injustices see Waldron 1992).
• The Argument from Equality . Members of a minority group are often disadvantaged in relation to the dominant culture because they have to rely on those with the same language and culture to conduct the affairs of daily life. Therefore, liberal neutrality itself requires that the majority provide certain basic cultural goods, i.e., granting differential rights (see Kymlicka 1995b, 2001, and 2003b). Institutional protections and the right to the minority group’s own institutional structure are remedies that restore equality and turn the resulting nation-state into a more moderate multicultural one.
• The Argument from Success . The nationstate has in the past succeeded in promoting equality and democracy. Ethno-national solidarity is a powerful motive for a more egalitarian distribution of goods (Miller 1995; Canovan 1996, 2000). The nation-state also seems to be essential to safeguard the moral life of communities in the future, since it is the only form of political institution capable of protecting communities from the threats of globalization and assimilationism (for a detailed critical discussion of this argument see Mason 1999).

Andreas Wimmer (2018) presents an interesting discussion of the historical success of nation-state (discussed in Knott, Tolz, Green, & Wimmer 2019).

These political arguments can be combined with deep communitarian ones. However, taken in isolation, their perspectives offer a “liberal culturalism” that is more suitable for ethno-culturally plural societies. More remote from classical nationalism than the liberal one of Tamir and Nielsen, it eschews any communitarian philosophical underpinning. [ 23 ] The idea of moderate nation-building points to an open multi-culturalism in which every group receives its share of remedial rights but, instead of walling itself off from others, participates in a common, overlapping civic culture in open communication with other sub-communities. Given the variety of pluralistic societies and intensity of trans-national interactions, such openness seems to many to be the only guarantee of stable social and political life (see the debate in Shapiro and Kymlicka 1997).

In general, the liberal nationalist stance is mild and civil, and there is much to be said in favor of it. It tries to reconcile our intuitions in favor of some sort of political protection of cultural communities with a liberal political morality. Of course, this raises issues of compatibility between liberal universal principles and the particular attachments to one’s ethno-cultural nation. Very liberal nationalists such as Tamir divorce ethno-cultural nationhood from statehood. Also, the kind of love for country they suggest is tempered by all kinds of universalist considerations, which in the last instance trump national interest (Tamir 1993: 115; 2019: passim, see also Moore 2001 and Gans 2003). There is an ongoing debate among philosophical nationalists about how much weakening and compromising is still compatible with a stance’s being nationalist at all. [ 24 ] There is also a streak of cosmopolitan interest present in the work of some liberal nationalists (Nielsen 1998–99). [ 25 ]

In the last two decades, the issues of nationalism have been increasingly integrated into the debate about the international order (see the entries on globalization and cosmopolitanism ). The main conceptual link is the claim that nation-states are natural, stable, and suitable units of the international order. A related debate concerns the role of minorities in the processes of globalization (see Kaldor 2004). Moreover, the two approaches might ultimately converge: a multiculturalist liberal nationalism and a moderate, difference-respecting cosmopolitanism have a lot in common. [ 26 ]

“Populism” is an umbrella term, covering both right-wing and left-wing varieties. This section will pay attention to right-wing populist movements, very close to their traditional nationalist predecessors. This corresponds to the situation in the biggest part of Europe, and in the US, where nationalist topics are being put forward by the right-wing populist. [ 27 ]

However, it has become quite clear that nationalism is only one of the political “isms” attracting the right-wing populists. The migration crisis has brought to the forefront populist self-identification with linguistic-cultural communities (“we, French speaking people” for the former, “we Christians” for the later) that goes beyond nationalism.

Jan-Werner Müller (2016) and Cas Mudde (2007) note that the form common to all sorts of populism is quite simple and describe it as “thin”. Mudde explains: “Populism is understood as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the People” (2007: 23). Populism, so defined, has two opposites: elitism and pluralism. First, there is the elite vs. people (“underdog”) contrast. Second, it is possible to distinguish two ways of characterizing “the people”: either in terms of social status (class, income-level, etc.) or in terms of ethnic and/or cultural belonging (see also de Cleen 2017).

The second, horizontal dimension distinguishes the predominantly left-wing from the predominantly right-wing populisms and leaves a place for a centrist populist option. Take classical strong ethnic nationalism. The relation between right-wing populism and such a nationalism is very tight. This has led some theoreticians (Taguieff 2015) to present “nationalist populism” as the only kind of populism. The term captures exactly the synthesis of populism and the strong ethnic nationalism or nativism. From populism, it takes the general schema of anti-elitism: the leader is addressing directly the people and is allegedly following the people’s interest. From nationalism, it takes the characterization of the people: it is the ethnic community, in most cases the state-owing ethnic community, or the ethno-nation. In his work, Mudde documents the claim that purely right-wing populists claim to represent the true people who form the true nation and whose purity is being muddied by new entrants. In the United States, one can talk about populist and reactionary movements, like the Tea Party, that have emerged through the recent experience of immigration, terrorist attacks, and growing economic polarization. We have to set aside here, for reasons of space, the main populist alternative (or quasi-alternative) to national populism. In some countries, like Germany, some populist groups-parties (e.g., German AfD party (Alternative for Germany)), appeal to properties much wider in their reach than ethno-national belonging, typically to religious affiliations. Others combine this appeal with the ethno-national one. This yields what Riva Kastoryano (2006) calls “transnational nationalism”.

Interestingly, liberal nationalism is not very attractive to the populists. On the theoretical side one can note that Tamir (2019) sees her liberal nationalism as a good recipe against the threat of demagogues like Trump and Boris Johnson (she avoids the use of the label “populist”, e.g., 2019: 31).

The rise of populism is changing the political playfield one must work with. The tolerant (liberal nationalist or anti-nationalist) views are confronting new problems in the populist age marked by migration crisis, etc. The dangers traditionally associated with military presence are gone; the national populists have to invent and construct a presumed danger that comes into the country together with foreign families, including those with children. In short, if these conjectures hold, the politicians and theoreticians are faced with a change. The traditional issue of the contrast between patriotism/nationalism and cosmopolitanism has changed its profile: the current drastic contrast is between the populist aversion to the foreigners-migrants and a more generous attitude of acceptance and Samaritan help. Finally, the populist understanding of “our people” (“we-community”) encompasses not only nationalist options but also goes way beyond it. The important element is the promiscuous character of the populist choices. It is probable that the future scholarship on nationalism will mainly focus on this new and challenging playfield, with an aim to address the new contrast and locate kinds of nationalism in relation to it. [ 28 ]

The migration crisis has made the nation-state in global context the central political topic concerning nationality. Before moving on to current events, the state of art before the crisis should be summarized. First, consider the debates on territory and nation and issues of global justice.

Liberal nationalists try to preserve the traditional nationalist link between ethnic “ownership” of the state and sovereignty and territorial control, but in a much more flexible and sophisticated setting. Tamar Meisels thus argues in favor of “taking existing national settlements into account as a central factor in demarcating territorial boundaries” since this line “has both liberal foundations” (i.e., in the work of John Locke) and liberal-national appeal (2009: 159) grounded in its affinity with the liberal doctrine of national self-determination. She combines it with Chaim Gans’ (2003: Ch. 4) interpretation of “historical right” claims as “the right to formative territories”. She thus combines “historical arguments, understood as claims to formative territories”, with her argument from settlement and insists on their interplay and mutual reinforcement, presenting them as being “most closely related to, and based on, liberal nationalist assumptions and underlying ideas” (Meisels 2009: 160). She nevertheless stresses that more than one ethnic group can have formative ties to a given territory, and that there might be competing claims based on settlement. [ 29 ] But, given the ethno-national conflicts of the twentieth century, one can safely assume that culturally plural states divided into isolated and closed sub-communities glued together merely by arrangements of modus vivendi are inherently unstable. Stability might therefore require that the pluralist society envisioned by liberal culturalists promote quite intense intra-state interaction between cultural groups in order to forestall mistrust, reduce prejudice, and create a solid basis for cohabitation.

But where should one stop? The question arises since there are many geographically open, interacting territories of various sizes. Consider first the geographical openness of big continental planes, then add the modern ease of interaction (“No island is an island any more”, one could say), and, finally and dramatically, the substantial ecological interconnectedness of land and climate. Here, the tough nationalistic line is no longer proposed seriously in ethical debates, so the furthest pro-national extreme is in fact a relatively moderate stance, exemplified by Miller in the works listed. Here is a typical proposal of his concerning global justice based on nation-states: it might become a matter of national pride to have set aside a certain percentage of GDP for developmental goals—perhaps for projects in one particular country or group of countries (2013: 182).

This brings us to the topic of migrations, and the heated debate on the present scene. [ 30 ] In Europe immigration is probably the main topic of the present day populist uproar, and in the United States it is one of the main topics. So, immigration plus the nationalist-populist reactions to it are in the current decade the main testing ground for nationalist and cosmopolitan views.

Let’s look at the pro-national side in the debate. Liberal nationalists, in particular Miller, have put forward some thoughtful pro-nationalist proposal concerning immigration. Miller’s proposal allows refugees to seek asylum temporarily until the situation in their country of origin improves; it also limits economic migration. Miller argues against the defensibility of a global standard for equality, opportunity, welfare, etc., because measures of just equality are context-bound. People do have the right to a minimum standard of living, but the right to migrate only activates as a last resort after all other measures within a candidate-migrant’s country of origin have been tried. However, he also (particularly in his book on “Strangers in our midst”, 2016), claims that national responsibility to accept immigrant refugees is balanced by considerations of the interest of would-be immigrants and the interests that national communities have in maintaining control over their own composition and character.

If we agree with the liberal nationalists on the positive side, we can ask about the dynamics of the help required for the immigrants. Distinguish at least three stages, first, the immediate emergency (starvation, freezing, urgent medical problems) and catering to it, second, settlement and learning (on the host and the immigrant newcomer side), and third, the stage of (some kind of) citizenship, of relatively stable life in the host country.

In the first phase, the immediate help comes first, both normatively and causally: just accept the would-be refugees (indeed, the would-be refugees should be helped in leaving their countries and travelling to the host country). In longer term, staying should involve opportunity for work and training.

But there is more. The Samaritan obligation can and should function as a preparation for wider global activity. [ 31 ] So, we have two theoretical steps, first, accepting Samaritanism and second, agreeing with deeper trans-national measure of blocking distant causes, like poverty and wars in the Third world. Let us call this “Samaritan-to-deeper-measures model”. The model is geared to the dramatically changed playground in which the nationalism issues are played out in the context of populism and refugee crisis, raising issues that were not around two decades ago.

In presenting the claims that the pro-nationalists defend, we have proceeded from the more radical towards more liberal nationalist alternatives. In examining the arguments for these claims, we have presented metaphysically demanding communitarian arguments resting upon deep communitarian assumptions about culture, such as the premise that the ethno-cultural nation is the most important community for all individuals. This is an interesting and respectable claim, but its plausibility has not been established. The moral debate about nationalism has resulted in various weakenings of culture-based arguments, typically proposed by liberal nationalists, which render the arguments less ambitious but much more plausible. Having abandoned the old nationalist ideal of a state owned by a single dominant ethno-cultural group, liberal nationalists have become receptive to the idea that identification with a plurality of cultures and communities is important for a person’s social identity. They have equally become sensitive to trans-national issues and more willing to embrace a partly cosmopolitan perspective. Liberal nationalism has also brought to the fore more modest, less philosophically or metaphysically charged arguments grounded in concerns about justice. These stress the practical importance of ethno-cultural membership, ethno-cultural groups’ rights to have injustices redressed, democratic rights of political association, and the role that ethno-cultural ties and associations can play in promoting just social arrangements.

The events in the current decade, the refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing populism, have dramatically changed the relevant practical and theoretical playground. The traditional nationalism is still relevant, but populist nationalism attracts much more attention: new theories are being produced and debated, coming to occupy the center stage. On the other hand, migration crisis has replaced the typical cosmopolitan issue of solidarity-with-distant-strangers with burning issues of helping refugees present at our doors. Of course, the causes of the crisis are still the same ones that cosmopolitans have been worrying about much earlier: wars and dramatically unequal global distribution of goods, and of threats, like illnesses and climate disasters. The task of the theory is now to connect these deeper issues with the new problems occupying the center-stage of the new playground; it is a challenge now formulated in somewhat different vocabulary and within different political conceptual frameworks than before.

This is a short list of books on nationalism that are readable and useful introductions to the literature. First, two contemporary classics of social science with opposing views are:

• Gellner, Ernest, 1983, Nations and Nationalism , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Smith, Anthony D., 1991, National Identity , Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Three presentations of liberal nationalism, two of them by the same author, Yael Tamir, offer the best introduction to the approach:

• Miller, David, 1995, On Nationality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198293569.001.0001
• Tamir, Yael, 1993, Liberal Nationalism , Press, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2019, Why Nationalism , Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Two short and readable introductions are:

• Özkirimli, Umut, 2010, Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction , second edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan. First edition is 2000; third edition is 2017.
• Spencer, Philip and Howard Wollman, 2002, Nationalism, A Critical Introduction , London: Sage.

The two best anthologies of high-quality philosophical papers on the morality of nationalism are:

• McKim, Robert and Jeff McMahan (eds), 1997, The Morality of Nationalism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Couture, Jocelyne, Kai Nielsen, and Michel Seymour (eds.), 1998, Rethinking Nationalism , Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Supplement Volume 22, Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.

The debate continues in:

• Miscevic, Nenad (ed), 2000, Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict: Philosophical Perspectives , La Salle and Chicago: Open Court.
• Dieckoff, Alain (ed.), 2004, The Politics of Belonging: Nationalism, Liberalism, and Pluralism , Lanham: Lexington.
• Primoratz, Igor and Aleksandar Pavković (eds), 2007, Patriotism, Philosophical and Political Perspectives , London: Ashgate.
• Breen, Keith and Shane O’Neill (eds.), 2010, After the Nation? Critical Reflections on Nationalism and Postnationalism , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230293175

A good brief sociological introduction to nationalism in general is:

• Grosby, Steven, 2005, Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

and to the gender-inspired criticism of nationalism is:

• Yuval-Davis, Nira, 1997, Gender & Nation , London: Sage Publications.
• Heuer, Jennifer, 2008, “Gender and Nationalism”, in Herb and Kaplan 2008: vol. 1, 43–58.
• Hogan, Jackie, 2009, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood , London: Routledge.

The best general introduction to the communitarian-individualist debate is still:

• Avineri, Shlomo and Avner de-Shalit (eds.), 1992, Communitarianism and Individualism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

For a non-nationalist defense of culturalist claims see:

• Kymlicka, Will (ed.), 1995a, The Rights of Minority Cultures , Oxford: Oxford University Press.

A very readable philosophical defense of very moderate liberal nationalism is:

• Gans, Chaim, 2003, The Limits of Nationalism , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511490231

And for application to Central Europe see:

• Auer, Stefan, 2004, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe , London: Routledge.

A polemical, witty and thoughtful critique is offered in:

• Barry, Brian, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

And a more recent one in

• Kelly, Paul, 2015, “Liberalism and Nationalism”, in The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism , Steven Wall (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 329–352. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139942478.018

Interesting critical analyses of group solidarity in general and nationalism in particular, written in the traditions of rational choice theory and motivation analysis, are:

• Hardin, Russell, 1985, One for All, The Logic of Group Conflict , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Yack, Bernard, 2012, Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

There is a wide offering of interesting sociological and political science work on nationalism, which is beginning to be summarized in:

• Motyl, Alexander (ed.), 2001, Encyclopedia of Nationalism , Volumes I and II, New York: Academic Press.

A fine encyclopedic overview is:

• Herb, Guntram H. and David H. Kaplan, 2008, Nations and Nationalism: a Global Historical Overview , four volumes, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio.

A detailed sociological study of life under nationalist rule is:

• Billig, Michael, 1995, Banal Nationalism , London: Sage Publications.

The most readable short anthology of brief papers for and against cosmopolitanism (and nationalism) by leading authors in the field is:

• Cohen, Joshua (ed.), 1996, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism , Martha Nussbaum and respondents, Boston, MA: Beacon Press
• Anderson, Benedict, 1983 [2006], Imagined Communities , London: Verso; revised edition, 2006.
• Aron, Raymond, 1962, Paix et guerre entre les nations , Paris: Calmann-Levy. Translated as Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations , Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (trans), Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965.
• Balibar, Etienne and Immanuel Wallerstein, 1988 [1991], Race, nation, classe: les identités ambiguës , Paris: Editiones La Découverte; translated as Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities , Chris Turner (trans.), London-New York: Verso.
• Barber, Benjamin R., 1996, “Constitutional Faith”, in J. Cohen (ed.) 1996: 30–37.
• –––, 1996, Jihad Vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World , New York: Ballantine Books.
• Barry, Brian, 1999, “Statism and Nationalism: a Cosmopolitan Critique”, in Shapiro and Brilmayer 1999: 12–66.
• –––, 2001, Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism , Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
• Bauböck, Reiner, 2004, “Territorial or Cultural Autonomy for National Minorities?”, in Dieckoff 2004: 221–258.
• Bechhofer, Frank and David McCrone (eds.), 2009, National Identity, Nationalism and Constitutional Change , London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1057/9780230234147
• Bell, Duncan (ed.), 2008, Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Berlin, Isaiah, 1976, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas , London: The Hogarth Press.
• –––, 1979, “Nationalism: Past Neglect and Present Power”, in Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas , London: Hogarth Press, 333–355.
• Betts, Alexander and Paul Collier, 2017, Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System , London: Penguin.
• –––, 2017, “Banal Nationalism and the Imagining of Politics”, in Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging after Banal Nationalism , Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (eds.), London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 307–321. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-57098-7_15
• Blake, Michael, 2013, Justice and Foreign Policy , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199552009.001.0001
• Breuilly, John, 2001, “The State”, in Motyl (ed.) 2001: Volume 1.
• –––, 2011, “On the Principle of Nationality”, in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought , Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 77–109. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521430562.005
• Breuilly, John, John Hutchinson, and Eric Kaufmann (eds), 2019, special issue on populism and nationalism in Nations and Nationalism , 25(1): 1–400.
• Brubaker, Rogers, 2004, “In the Name of the Nation: Reflections on Nationalism and Patriotism1”, Citizenship Studies , 8(2): 115–127. doi:10.1080/1362102042000214705
• –––, 2013, “Language, Religion and the Politics of Difference”, Nations and Nationalism , 19(1): 1–20. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8129.2012.00562.x
• –––, 2015, Grounds for Difference , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Buchanan, Allen, 1991, Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec , Boulder: Westview Press.
• –––, 2004, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198295359.001.0001
• Buchanan, Allen and Margaret Moore (eds.), 2003, States, Nations and Borders: The Ethics of Making Boundaries , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511613937
• Butt, Daniel, Sarah Jane Fine, & Zofia Stemplowska (eds), 2018, Political Philosophy, Here and Now: Essays in Honour of David Miller , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Calhoun, Craig, 2007, Nations Matter. Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream , London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203960899
• Canovan, Margaret, 1996, Nationhood and Political Theory , Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• –––, 2000, “Patriotism Is Not Enough”, British Journal of Political Science , 30(3): 413–432. doi:10.1017/S000712340000017X
• –––, 2001, “Sleeping Dogs, Prowling Cats and Soaring Doves: Three Paradoxes in the Political Theory of Nationhood”, Political Studies , 49(2): 203–215. doi:10.1111/1467-9248.00309
• Carens, Joseph H., 2013, The Ethics of Immigration , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Casertano, Stefano, 2013, Our Land, Our Oil! Natural Resources, Local Nationalism, and Violent Secession , Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. doi:10.1007/978-3-531-19443-1
• Chatterjee, Deen K. and B. Smith (eds.), 2003, Moral Distance , special issue of The Monist , 86(3): 327–515.
• Christiano, Thomas, 2008, “Immigration, Community and Cosmopolitanism”, in San Diego Law Review , 933(Nov–Dec): 938–962.
• –––, 2012, “The Legitimacy of International Institutions”, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law , Andrei Marmor (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 380–394.
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• Twining, William (ed.), 1991, Issues of Self-determination , Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
• Vick, Brian, 2007, “Of Basques, Greeks, and Germans: Liberalism, Nationalism, and the Ancient Republican Tradition in the Thought of Wilhelm von Humboldt”, Central European History , 40(4): 653–681. doi:10.1017/S0008938907001070
• Vincent, Andrew, 2001, “Political Theory”, in Motyl (ed.) 2001: Volume 1, 589–599.
• Waldron, Jeremy, 1992, “Superseding Historic Injustice”, Ethics , 103(1): 4–28. doi:10.1086/293468
• Walker, R.B.J., 2001, “Postmodernism”, in Motyl (ed.) 2001: Volume 1, 611–630.
• Walzer, Michael, 1983, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality , New York: Basic Boooks.
• –––, 2002, “Passion and Politics”, Philosophy & Social Criticism , 28(6): 617–633. doi:10.1177/019145370202800602
• –––, 2004, Arguing about War , New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
• Weber, Max, 1924, “Diskussionsrede zum Vortrag von P. Barth ‘Die Nationalitit in ihrer soziologischer (1912) Bedeutung’ auf dem zweiten Deutschen Soziologentag in Berlin 1912”, in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik , Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), S. pp. 484–486.
• Wellman, Christopher Heath, 2005, A Theory of Secession: The Case for Self- Determination , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511499265
• Williams, Michael C., 2007, “Morgenthau Now: Neoconservatism, National Greatness, and Realism”, in Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans Morgenthau in International Relations , Michael C. Williams (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 216–240.
• Wimmer, Andreas, 2013, Waves of War: Nationalism, State Formation, and Ethnic Exclusion in the Modern World , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139198318
• –––, 2018, Nation Building: Why Some Countries Come Together While Others Fall Apart, Princeton: Princeton University Press
• Wright, Sue, 2016, Language Policy and Language Planning: From Nationalism to Globalisation , second revised edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-57647-7
• –––, 2018, “Nationalism’s Grip on Democracy: Good News and Bad”, in Reimagining Nation and Nationalism in Multicultural East Asia , Sungmoon Kim and Hsin-Wen Lee (eds.), London: Routledge, chapter 1.
• Ypi, Lea, 2011, Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199593873.001.0001
• Yuval-Davis, Nira, 1997, Gender and Nation , New York: Sage Publications.
• Žižek, Slavoj, 2015, “In the Wake of Paris Attacks the Left Must Embrace Its Radical Western Roots”, In These Times , 16 November 2015, available online .
• –––, 2017, The Incontinence of the Void , Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Nussbaum, Martha C. 2002, “ Beyond the Social Contract: Toward Global Justice ”, Tanner Lecture, Australian National University.
• Waldron, Jeremy, 2005, “ Proximity as the Basis of Political Community .”
• Nationalism – A Bibliography , compiled by Peter Rasmussen. A good collection of links and bibliographies, but no longer maintained.
• The Warwick Debates , debate between Ernest Gellner and Anthony D. Smith at the London School of Economics, 1995.
• ARENA: Centre for European Studies ; ARENA is a research centre at the University of Oslo studying the dynamics of the evolving European systems of governance. This site contains a good selection of papers on ethics of international relations.
• Global Policy Forum , has papers on the future of nation-states.
• Academy of European Law , at the European University Institute.
• Territory and Justice network: repository of pre-publication papers .

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3 Nationalism: Intellectual Origins

Erica Benner, is Fellow in Ethics and the History of Philosophy at Yale University. Her publications include Really Existing Nationalisms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Machiavelli’s Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); and Thucydides’ Moral and Political Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).

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This essay traces intellectual developments behind some of the main forms of nationalism. It focuses on the ideas of a few highly reflective writers who discussed national issues in a general way, and who developed key concepts and arguments used in nationalist politics. Against the view that nationalism had no advocates among the greatest eighteenth- and nineteenth-century philosophers, I show that Rousseau, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, and Mill did offer powerfully reasoned arguments in defence of national values and politics. Some of nationalism’s early philosophical defenders were, however, also its most perceptive critics. They saw the formation of national states as a necessary, yet highly problematic, solution to problems of internal legitimacy and external defence.

In modern social science, the word ‘nationalism’ is generally used to describe any movement that seeks to make state boundaries correspond with those of self-proclaimed ‘nations’, or any doctrine that gives national interests priority over other considerations. Such uses aspire to value-neutrality. They do not assume that nationalism must have stronger affinities with some political ideologies than others, but recognize its capacity to link up with a wide range of values: internal freedom and internal control, liberation from foreign dominion and imperial self-assertion. Historically, however, national ideas have always carried highly controversial and conflicting political implications. Most of the concepts that are now regarded as basic elements of nationalist doctrine—nation-building, national identity or consciousness, national self-government—were first elaborated in the late eighteenth century by thinkers with strong republican sympathies. The term ‘nationalism’ itself was scarcely used before the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1866 edition of Larousse defined it as a ‘blind and exclusive’ preference for one’s own nation, or a degenerate form of reasonable patriotisme . Today this pejorative meaning remains standard throughout continental Europe: especially when applied to larger states, but also to movements of historically subordinate nations. A more positive sense emerged in anti-imperial circles around 1900 in the English-speaking countries, where until the First World War ‘nationalist’ meant a supporter of independence for Ireland and other subject peoples.

This essay traces some of the main intellectual developments behind these divergent understandings of nationalism. There are two distinct ways to study nationalism’s intellectual origins. One focuses on broad intellectual movements, political networks, and rhetoric, and examines the contexts in which they emerged and operated. The other focuses on the ideas of a few highly reflective writers who discussed national issues in a general way, and who developed key concepts and arguments used in nationalist politics. The second approach is adopted here. I take philosophical or philosophically informed texts as my main source, rather than a wider cross section of programmatic or historical works written to support particular nationalist causes.

It has been said that nationalism lacks any outstanding defenders among classical philosophers and political thinkers. 1 This claim presupposes a narrow view of what constitutes a defence of nationalism. If one assumes that such a defence must be wholehearted, or treat national values as more fundamental than individual freedom or international justice, it is true that few early discussions of nationality looked like this. Some of nationalism’s first philosophical defenders were also its most perceptive critics. They saw the formation of national polities as a necessary, yet by no means unproblematic, solution to urgent problems of internal legitimacy and external defence. On the one hand, they proposed various national means to make units of government more representative or popular, or to protect populations from unwanted intrusion by foreign powers. At the same time, they understood that nation-building raised difficult questions about the claims of minorities, the distribution of national territories, and the rights of states to decide whether considerations of national interest might take precedence over international standards. This ambivalence notwithstanding, the most profound thinkers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did offer powerfully reasoned arguments in defence of national values and politics. Rousseau, Herder, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Mill all saw national forms of legitimacy, independence, and resistance as among the most important corollaries of their ethical commitments. These philosophers did a great deal to articulate a distinctive and influential language of nationalism, together with what became its characteristic values and political prescriptions.

A close reading of early philosophical works can help to correct two misleading types of generalization found in historical and theoretical studies of nationalism. One assumes that particular nations or regions have their own highly distinctive forms of national doctrine, stressing their coherence and stability over time. 2 While such generalizations may be illuminating, they may also encourage exaggerated distinctions between ideal-typical Western and Eastern or English, French, German conceptions of nationality. Further, they often underestimate the extent to which the same ideas, social movements, and international pressures influenced national thinking across countries and regions. It is easier to avoid national stereotypes by focusing on the arguments of independent-minded thinkers who, though politically interested, sought to examine the moral and political implications of nationhood from a general standpoint rather than simply to advance a particular nationalist cause.

The second kind of generalization posits idealized contrasts among different types of national doctrine—‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’, liberal and authoritarian, anti-expansionist and imperial—while playing down their interconnections. If we presume that civic nationhood is clearly distinct from ethnic, or that liberal individualism must preclude imperialist or racist forms of nationalism, we may overlook the combinations and alliances formed among these doctrines during the past three centuries. Historically ill-informed typologies create the impression that some forms of nationalism were more absolute in their value commitments or resistant to compromise than they often were; or that other forms, conversely, carried built-in immunity to extremism, intolerance, or injustice. A more nuanced account emerges from reading the texts discussed here, especially if readers do not impose today’s standard typologies on more complex ideas developed in the past. Early philosophical writings furnish an invaluable source for understanding the pressures that gave rise to nationalism in its different forms, and the complex moral issues that it continues to raise.

From Peoples to Nations: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The modern political idea of the nation has ancient and early modern sources. The Latin word natio meant place of origin. It had lacked strong political connotations in ancient times, but was sometimes used in the Middle Ages as a near-synonym for gens , signifying the high-ranking or true ‘people’ in Roman and medieval usage. Early modern republicans ascribed this sense of natio-gens to the whole free male population of a city or state. The concept of ‘nation’ was thus linked to the normative idea of sovereignty by identifying the people who were entitled to hold ultimate authority within a polity. At the same time, the word ‘nation’ retained the older sense of birthplace or paternal home, evoking the idea of an ancestral territory. This sense of ‘nation’ drew on a rich repertoire of ancient arguments defending the value of self-government ( autonomia, liberta ) for any city or people, in its traditional homeland ( patria ). Through its identification with patriotic values—which Greeks, Romans, Jews, and other ancient peoples held sacred—the term ‘nation’ acquired religious and emotional connotations. In relation to members of the same nation, the bond between sovereign people and homeland was sometimes expressed in quasi-religious terms as a bond between spiritual and organic aspects of the same ‘body’. In relation to non-members, the same bond served as a barrier—ideally rooted in both popular will and material power—against attempts by foreigners to control independent nations. Although English republicans first used the language of nationhood to refer to politically constituted ‘peoples’, it was readily extended to currently stateless ones. English and Italian political theorists frequently invoked Old Testament references to the Hebrew nation whose members lacked a territorial state, yet were bound together by their own written laws, religion, and historical memories. The fusion of Greek and Roman-era rhetoric of anti-imperial resistance with biblical examples lent force to the idea that stateless nations might have divine authority to constitute their own polities, casting off unwanted foreign control.

These internally legitimating and externally defensive values can be found in most national doctrines, however they differ from one another in other respects. If the early modern language of nationhood expressed a core idea, it was that legitimate authority should be conferred by a popular mandate, not by a monarch or narrowly based elite; and determined by the sovereign body within a nation, not imposed from without. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the concept of nationhood remained marginal even in republican theory. The Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) was the first writer to give it a larger role in a theory of political legitimacy. He grounded this role in what would become a highly influential argument about the moral importance of national sovereignty.

In the Social Contract (1762) Rousseau offered an exceptionally pure, voluntarist form of the civic national ideal. Its main elements were further developed by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). 3 Rousseau identified the nation as a ‘people’ constituted by individuals who, deliberating without distinction of birth, religion, or wealth, voluntarily establish their own governing authority. The primary bond among members of such a national community—indeed the only necessary one—is their agreement to obey the political authority they have created for themselves. Historical, cultural, or religious affinities may supplement uncoerced agreement as sources of legitimacy, but never substitute for it. In so far as authority is established under procedures that all see as fair, it is reasonable to consider individuals as obligated to follow its dictates for the sake of the common freedom. This version of civic nationhood rests on individualistic premises. It deliberately omits any reference to particular religious, regional, or social identities of contracting individuals; its guiding principle is equal respect for their powers of choice, limited only by respect for the same powers in others. 4 It is also egalitarian. Rousseau implied that any people who choose to constitute themselves as a nation have moral claims to independence that must be taken equally seriously, irrespective of their size, military strength, cultural characteristics, or whether they currently have a government of their own. Obviously, the legitimate claims of other peoples limit the territorial claims any nation may reasonably make. But facts of geography or current power may not override any people’s right to seek some form of independence.

This thoroughgoing egalitarianism set Rousseau’s argument apart from most other forms of civic nationhood advanced during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 5 By comparison with earlier contract theories, moreover, his arguments gave more consistent support to the independence claims of peoples living under or vulnerable to foreign domination. For example, nearly a century earlier John Locke (1632–1704) had argued that contracting individuals have natural rights to form new sovereign polities. But Locke proposed a non-contractual, inegalitarian criterion for distributing contested territory: if two or more peoples lay claim to the same land, it should go to those who use land in a more ‘rational and industrious’ manner. This criterion elevated a particular definition of progressive civilization above individuals’ equal rights to authorize or reject their governments. It gave the advantage to peoples who could claim to be introducing superior civilization, trumping historical claims of prior occupation. Rousseau rejected all teleologies that assigned unequal rights to independence or territory on the basis of claims to superiority in religion, civilization, or economic progress. This principled stance was rooted in political realism, not utopian naivety. Rousseau realized that notwithstanding their claims to objectivity, all theories that posit particular ends to justify overriding some people’s rights are controversial. Moreover, they tend to be defined in ways that give an advantage to the theorist’s own cause. The same is true of various empirical criteria that might be proposed as a basis for deciding which peoples may form independent nations. So long as unequal rights are justified in terms that some perceive as arbitrary and unjust, subordinate peoples will be restive, and dominant peoples insecure in their dominance. 6

At the same time, Rousseau recognized that international pressures made it difficult to implement contractarian principles in any single nation. For weaker peoples confronted by expansionist Great Powers, it was tempting to embrace defensive, collectivist, and exclusionary forms of nation-building instead of individualist ones. Rousseau outlined what these might involve in his constitutional projects Corsica (1765) and Poland (1772). Both were written at the behest of reformers in those countries, who hoped that more modern forms of government and administration might help to avert foreign invasion. 7 Noting that the impetus for such reforms came from insecurities created by competition among the preeminent states, Rousseau supported Corsican and Polish efforts to cultivate national particularities as insurance against foreign conquest. His advice to Corsicans stressed economic policies aimed at achieving independence from wealthier neighbours. His initial advice to the Poles was to play culture politics against power politics: they should use education and public rituals to implant a strong sense of national identity in their population. Rousseau acknowledged that the call to build up cultural barriers involved regrettable moral trade-offs. The intrinsic goodness or badness of a national practice might seem less important than how effectively it preserves the distinction between Poles and their conquerors. Even if practices are ‘in some respects bad’, they ‘will still have the advantage of making the Poles fond of their country and give them a natural revulsion to mingling with foreigners’. 8

Here Rousseau came close to presenting a justification for ethnic nationalism, which defines national identities in exclusive terms by grounding them in characteristics or sentiments that are said to be natural. He did not, however, defend it unequivocally. For Rousseau the choice of contractual or ethnocentric forms of nationhood was just that: a choice, and not one strongly predetermined by history or cultural traditions. National affinities and differences may be constructed in order to foster belief in their naturalness, and there may be good defensive reasons to do this. Rousseau understood that political choices are always constrained by conditions not of their agents’ own choosing; and that in his own times, ethnocentric nation-building might well seem like sound defensive strategy for weaker polities and peoples. Beleaguered Poles—whose country would soon be occupied and divided up between three powerful neighbours 9 —could reasonably see xenophobic revulsion as a rational means of self-preservation. External threats made it difficult for Poles to undertake internal reforms in line with Rousseau’s preferred republican principles. Instead of extending Poland’s narrow franchise and reinforcing local and religious freedoms, many reformers were tempted to remodel the constitution on the pattern of centralized absolute monarchy, and to impose more uniformity on the country’s diverse populations. Rousseau acknowledged the appeal of these options for Polish reformers, yet did not conclude that Poles and other vulnerable peoples should abandon contractarian principles and embrace ethnocentric practices. Instead he went on to suggest political and administrative reforms that would improve national defences while paving the way for eventual, far-reaching republican legislation.

Rousseau’s writings remain a valuable source for historians seeking to examine the origins of nationalism, and for political scientists and philosophers interested in elucidating the motives that fuel it. He offered equally penetrating accounts of the reasoning behind civic voluntarist and defensive ethnic forms of nationalism, and implied that the two are not fundamentally opposed. Both, he suggested, stem from the same basic human desires: to be treated as equally free and competent agents who ought willingly to confer legitimacy on their own political orders, and who have reason to feel insulted if others deny them this right. But if ethnic nationalism is an understandable reaction to external pressures, for Rousseau it was never a morally satisfactory response or one likely to improve local or international stability. The only durable solutions are based on contractual principles, applied to relations between polities as well as within them. So long as the fundamental causes of defensive nationalism—rampant Great Power competition and imperialism—were not addressed, national claims would continue to proliferate and become more uncompromising.

Nationalism and Language: Johann Gottfried Herder

Like his mentor Kant, the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was strongly influenced by Rousseau’s writings. But whereas Kant built on Rousseau’s contractual principles, Herder elaborated a new, non-contractual conception of nationhood. His analysis of contemporary international pressures that provoked defensive nation-building resembled Rousseau’s. Expansionist rivalries among the larger Powers, he argued, threatened the very survival of weaker peoples both in and beyond Europe. Herder also shared Rousseau’s egalitarian commitments. He denied that a handful of western European countries constituted models of superior civilization, or had better claims to independence than other peoples, currently stateless or not.

Despite these affinities, Herder’s defensive conception of nationhood was fundamentally different from Rousseau’s. Nations for Herder were constituted by common bonds of language, which drew legitimating force not from acts of consent but from nature and historical evolution. And whereas Rousseau countered the self-serving hierarchical ideologies of the Great Powers by insisting on universal and unchanging principles of right, Herder opposed the same ideologies with a rival teleological theory of history: one that supported the independence of weaker peoples against incursions by the strong. Criticizing German and other elites who mimicked French or English languages and cultures, he argued that the diversity of language communities was part of a Providential plan for the moral advancement of humanity. For Herder, language was mankind’s most distinctive and ennobling faculty, the foundation of sociability and sound morals, and the means for expanding human rational and spiritual capacities. Each language community, moreover, develops these capacities in its own unique way, thus discovering diverse and equally valuable routes to general truths. Since all languages embody legitimate interpretations of the common human experience, none may be ranked as superior to others—least of all because its speakers inhabit what are at present the most powerful states. In so far as he made judgements about their comparative value, Herder provocatively inverted the dominant standards of his era. Echoing Martin Luther, he suggested that vernacular languages—spoken in purest form by the lower social orders—were closer to nature and God’s truth than the ‘dead’ Latin of priests, or the stilted French favoured in many German courts.

Although Herder said less about national politics than about national culture, his arguments implied a novel theory of legitimacy. No previous philosopher had suggested that identities based on language should be regarded as the primary source of legitimate political authority or locus of political resistance. His conception of the ideal relationship between language communities and political units is ambiguous, and thus inspired very different types of national programme. With suitable qualifications, Herder may fairly be seen as the father of both pacific multiculturalism and exclusive ethnic nationalism. He never stated a preference for sharply bounded, monoglot states, or implied that these are a condition for human advancement. His mature writings call for the toleration of cultural differences, not the formation of mono-ethnic states. Yet Herder was keenly aware that in an age of increasing literacy and social consciousness among European middle classes, language and culture could become powerful weapons in political conflicts, wielded by dominators and resisters alike. No previous writer had so fully considered how shared identity based on language might serve as a political resource, especially a defensive resource for weaker peoples seeking to resist conquest, cultural assimilation, or persecution. 10 Empires that tried to ‘weld together’ diverse provinces and language groups would, Herder warned, inevitably provoke resistance; for ‘he who would suppress my language would also rob me of my reason and my way of life, and my people of honour and rights’. 11

Herder’s opposition to assimilation and conquest was unequivocal. It is less clear whether his criticisms imply that vulnerable language communities should respond by trying to build culturally unified states for themselves, or to establish military defences similar to those of existing stronger powers. The idea that cultural self-preservation depends on state power is intimated in Herder’s programmatic ‘Idea for the First Patriotic Institute for the Common Spirit of Germany’ (1787). 12 Language is described here not just as the expression of a people’s spirit and unique virtues. It is also a means of projecting power over others without having to lift a gun. In contemporary Europe, the French language exerted a ‘secret preponderance’ over other languages and cultures. No one forced Germans, Poles, or Russians to mimic French cultural norms; the glamour of power was enough to make people emulate them of their own accord. In the longer term, however, this uncoerced cultural dominance paved the way for French elites to impose ‘universal monarchy’ on Europe as a whole. Herder called on German princes and men of letters to resist this threat by forming a Patriotic Institute, charged with devising a common cultural and language policy for all the separate German states. Its aim should be to ensure that compatriots felt no shame or fear of ‘being Germans on our own well-protected piece of territory’. Since ‘the peoples of Europe (not excluding other parts of the world) are now in a contest of, not physical, but mental and artistic forces with each other,’ Herder declared, each ‘must advance with those others; in our time one can no longer be a barbarian; as a barbarian one gets cheated, trodden upon, despised, abused.’ No contemporary people could opt out of this global competition ‘even if it wanted to’. 13 In short, by the end of the eighteenth century national self-preservation had come to depend on cultural prestige as well as military and economic strength, and national political institutions had become necessary to defend distinct cultural identities.

Herder said almost nothing about the military dimensions of national statehood. He avoided explicit endorsements of military action in defence of nationality, and never directly enjoined weaker peoples to build up armies. Yet he sometimes hinted at the need to develop military defences as a condition for cultural survival. For example, he wrote that the historically ‘submissive and obedient’ conduct of non-Russian Slavs had long facilitated their oppression by the neighbouring empires. The time had now come, he told them, to ‘awaken from your long and heavy slumber’ and ‘be freed from your enslaving chains’. Shedding their aversion to ‘permanent military establishments’, the Slavs should seek to realize their historical destiny: to ‘use as their own’ the vast territories now dominated by Habsburg Germans and Ottoman Turks. 14 These remarks hardly amount to a call to arms against the latter, let alone to Pan-Slavic expansionism. Nevertheless, they indicate one of the many ambiguities in Herder’s practical legacy. Amid the conflicting national claims that emerged in the next century, many nationalist intellectuals and activists would interpret such comments as world-historical justification for asserting their claims by force, rather than by pursuing multinational coexistence.

Another ambiguity concerns the appropriate motives for pursuing defensive cultural nationalism. In his Treatise on the Origins of Language (1772), Herder distinguished between primitive and modern motives for sharpening divisions of language among groups that may have been closely related. Among primitive peoples, identity-defining wars arose from emotions connected with ‘family feeling’; their aim was not to assuage ‘hunger and thirst’ but to despoil enemies as a ‘sacrifice to the shades of their fathers’. Feelings of ‘jealousy, feeling of honour, pride in their race and their superiority’ drove people to separate their branch of a group from others and to form new, distinct language-cultures as a means of confirming the divorce. Herder identified three ‘slogans’ that served as the basis for differentiating communities, leading them to represent their differences as absolute. The first degrades the status of enemies: Whoever is not with and of us is beneath us! The foreigner is worse than us, is a barbarian . The second naturalizes enmities, making ‘national hatred…eternal in perpetual, bitter wars’: Whoever is not with me is against me . The third slogan asserts the ‘complete division and separation’ of rival groups. As Herder put it:

who wanted to have anything in common with…the contemptible barbarian? No familial customs, no remembrance of a single origin, and least of all language [should be held in common].…Language could not possibly, therefore, remain of one kind. And so the same familial feeling that had formed a single language, when it became national hatred, often created…complete difference in language.

According to Herder, these primitive motives are rooted ‘more in noble weakness than base vice’. In the long run, he expected wise nature to tame divisive impulses: over time different peoples would stop treating each other like ‘national animals’ ( Nationaltiere ) and recognize diverse but complementary ways of being human. 15 It is not always clear, however, whether Herder thought that nature had moved the politics of his own times beyond primitive attitudes. His early and late writings condemn ‘the barbaric system of war and conquest’ treated by contemporary statesmen as ‘the sole, immovable basis of all the states of Europe’. 16 If the conquering Great Powers still exhibited primitive impulses in their treatment of weaker peoples, how should the latter defend themselves, if not by similar means? Defensive nationalists might well take from Herder the idea that national egoism or even ‘hatred’—however deplorable—should be judged a ‘noble weakness’ inflicted by the times, rather than denounced as ‘limited nationalism’ ( eingeschränkten Nationalismus ). 17

Despite Herder’s commitment to future goals of national toleration, then, the immediate political implications of his ideas were complex. In contrast to Rousseau and Kant, he said little about the legal or moral restraints that should guide nationalist efforts to forge new national states. Rousseau saw international law and institutions as the only realistic foundation for national freedom. Herder doubted whether formal laws could ever have obligatory force in relations between nations, and so did not advise peoples or states to put themselves under common restraints. His lack of interest in wider political and legal frameworks for adjusting different national claims was underwritten by the teleological structure of Herder’s theory of history. He assumed that history is directed by a wise, purposive nature that would ultimately ‘compensate’ for injustices committed in the present. This assumption elicited Kant’s objection that Herder’s theory of history was too speculative and optimistic to support his vision of human coexistence. Providential nature may never help men evolve better moral dispositions; their only realistic hope, Kant argued, was to impose stronger and fairer restraints on themselves. 18

Moreover, Herder’s language-based criterion for nationhood raised a host of practical issues that he himself did not address. The idea of a national language is inherently controversial, and could be interpreted and applied in self-serving ways. For example, in 1808 Fichte suggested that German nationality encompassed a broad language family including speakers of Dutch as well as the Germanic Scandinavian languages. Such expansive uses of the language criterion illustrate its potentially explosive political implications. Herder himself did not specify which peoples should constitute the German nation, or distinguish clearly between German-speaking, Germanic, or Teutonic Völker . But even if he had, this would have stirred up more arguments than it resolved. As Rousseau and Kant recognized, there is a fundamental difficulty in applying any theory that locates the source of political legitimacy in pre-defined group identities, rather than in the wishes of its members. Someone has to decide what count as the pertinent forms of identity, and what particular cases meet their criteria; and this is never a matter of objective judgement, but involves controversial political interests.

German Reactions to the Revolutionary Wars

The revolutions in America and France claimed to found new national forms of legitimacy on universal, republican principles. 19 Some of the most interesting intellectual reactions to these movements, especially to the French revolution, came from Germany. By 1800, the confederation of German states known as the Holy Roman Empire had begun to disintegrate under pressure from the revolutionary wars. In 1806 Napoleon invaded Prussia. These events led two young German philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), to suggest alternatives to the crusading republican concept of nationhood that prevailed in revolutionary France.

Fichte’s early and late philosophical writings maintain strongly cosmopolitan positions. Like many German intellectuals, he supported the French Revolution in its first years. In the 1790s he defended a unitary concept of the nation based on republican principles, and argued that republican revolutionaries were entitled to use forcible intervention to advance the cause of freedom in other countries. But when Napoleon invaded Prussia, Fichte recanted these views. His Addresses to the German Nation (1808) were delivered in French-occupied Berlin as public lectures permitted by French authorities. Here Fichte urged Germans to reject occupation and mobilize around a common national identity, casting out ‘foreign artifices’.

While his arguments have sometimes been seen as foreshadowing extremist ethnic nationalism in Germany, this view needs careful qualification. 20 The Addresses combined a Machiavelli-inspired doctrine of resistance to conquest with Rousseau-like arguments about how to construct a political and cultural sense of nationhood. Fichte pointed out that few Germans at the time had political allegiances transcending their separate states. A sense of nationality must ‘be instilled in them’ by deliberate policies. The most important of these should establish a system of education designed to inculcate a shared cultural identity. Fichte did add a non-voluntarist element that had not appeared in any of his earlier writings, and vanished again after the Addresses : he described language as the key feature distinguishing one nation from another and, like Herder, considered language-based identities as a fundamental source of political legitimacy. Indeed, Fichte may have been the first author to argue explicitly that language communities have a right to self-government. ‘Whenever a separate language is found,’ he declared, ‘there a separate nation exists, which has the right to take independent charge of its affairs and to govern itself.’ 21 He went well beyond Herder in postulating a moral hierarchy among nations, based on the extent to which their languages had been corrupted by foreign borrowings. Emulating Luther’s crusade against foreign corruption, Fichte insisted that national self-liberation should be conjoined with a mission to seek the ‘salvation’ of ‘the whole human race’. But while the Protestant idea of ‘elect’ nations granted some the right to lead others, Fichte’s conception of national leadership was largely innocent of power-political ambitions. The Germans’ humanitarian mission should not, he insisted, be pursued by military or political means involving the domination of other peoples, but by spreading the system of rational education outlined in the Addresses .

If there are morally dubious elements in Fichte’s national thinking, they are rooted less in ethnocentrism than in the priority he gave to ends of national unification over restraints on the means that may be used to pursue it. Fichte rejected the unitary French model of nation-statehood. He praised the separation of state and cultural nation in German-speaking lands, which he saw as a more natural condition for Germans and a better guard for individual liberties. Ultimately, however, external pressures meant that German independence would be compromised without political unification. The envisaged German nation state should protect civil liberties, giving ‘freedom as wide a field as possible, even at the risk of securing a smaller degree of uniform peace and quietness’. But in the face of foreign threats, ‘the devouring flame of a higher patriotism’ must have ‘an undisputed right to summon and to order everyone concerned’. 22

Hegel too withdrew his initial support for the French Revolution after witnessing its violence and expansionist zeal. In texts later published as The German Constitution (1798–1802), Hegel deplored the political disunity that had allowed some German states to ‘come under the rule of the conquerors, and hence also of foreign laws and customs’, while ‘many others will lose what is their highest good, namely their existence as independent states’. In response, he urged the formation of a unified German state with a national ‘centre…in which all powers are concentrated’, and reorganizing ‘the whole military strength of Germany into a single army’. Political unity and common defences were the main prerequisites for nation-building; the question whether Germans should opt for a monarchy or a republic was a secondary issue. Hegel admitted that unification might only be achieved by force, not mainly because of disagreements among leaders, but because the idea of unification was ‘utterly alien’ to most German people. 23 In keeping with this anti-populist stance, he did not regard a common popular culture as essential for the envisaged Nationalstaat .

Hegel’s later works outline a conception of national unity based on combining traditional institutions with modernizing reforms. According to his philosophy of history, the principal agents of human rational development are distinct peoples ( Völker ). Echoing Herder, he proposed a distinctive account of political legitimacy based on the idea that Sittlichkeit —or ‘ethical life’—can develop only in the life of particular peoples, and only through particularity can it contribute to the universal progress of reason. Modern, sovereign states with sharply bounded territories were the best means of protecting and nurturing particular Sitten . Writing in the 1820s, Hegel argued that such national states represented the highest development of human reason and ethical development. The most important distinguishing features of these nations were generated through common political life, and sustained by the defensive needs of the state. They had no necessary roots in language or religion.

Hegel’s mature political theory had universalistic foundations: unlike Herder, he proposed standards of rational order that any modern state should strive to meet. Yet in one key respect, Hegel’s version of Enlightenment universalism was considerably more particularistic than that of Rousseau, Kant, Herder, or Fichte. These philosophers called for an end to what they saw as a historically transient or corrupt and unnatural state of war among nations. Both Rousseau and Kant exhorted all societies to put themselves voluntarily under universal legal restraints, and Fichte too envisaged a future condition of international right among formally equal states. By contrast, Hegel argued that the state of war was the natural and hence the permanent condition of international relations. One condition for national independence was a clear ‘awareness of one’s existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others’; and war could play a useful role in strengthening this sense of identity. This view had particularistic and illiberal implications. It inflated the rights of nation states in their external relations, while undermining restraints on their actions. This, in turn, created a tension between Hegel’s principles of internal political order—which respected the rights of individuals, corporations, regions, and minorities—and the more collectivist virtues he saw as necessary in relations among modern states. Maintaining the ‘independence and sovereignty of the state’ was the individual’s highest duty, ‘at the risk and the sacrifice of property and life, as well as of opinion and everything else naturally comprised in the compass of life’. 24 These views were rooted not in authoritarian attitudes, but in concerns about external defence that persisted even after the Revolutionary wars.

Hegel’s conception of nationality was inegalitarian as well as ethically particularistic. His theory of history picked out specific peoples in each epoch who contributed more than the rest to the rational development of the species. In other respects, the theory resembled Herder’s attempts to identify Providential purposes that have directed human history in all times and places, and that are destined to bring the disparate national parts of humanity to accept common standards of reason—making it unnecessary to subordinate themselves to formal international laws. Herder, however, had insisted on the equal value of different national contributions to human progress. He placed special emphasis on the rich cultural life of Völker such as the Baltic peoples and non-Russian Slavs who, lacking states of their own, were judged history’s losers by criteria of Realpolitik . Hegel adapted Herder’s teleological account of world history to the hierarchical thinking that would dominate discussions of nationality in the nineteenth century. He argued that only peoples with a history of political independence were entitled to form national states. Hegel’s metaphysical account of history’s ultimate ends reflected the power-political anxieties of his times. ‘In the existence of a nation,’ he wrote, ‘the substantial aim’ set by history ‘is to be a state and preserve itself as such.’ According to this criterion, the most advanced nations were those that currently possessed their own state. Any people who sought to form a new state must have had one in the past, and meet various geographical and political criteria of viability. ‘A nation with no state formation (a mere nation),’ Hegel argued, ‘has, strictly speaking, no history—like the nations which existed before the rise of states and others which still exist in a condition of savagery.’ 25 Peoples thus denied rights to self-government were bound to regard such criteria as arbitrary reflections of particular interests. Nevertheless, similar claims that nations could be ranked as more and less ‘historical’, and thus deserving of independence, were proposed by republicans such as Giuseppe Mazzini, liberals such as John Stuart Mill, and socialists such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In different ways all these thinkers built on the republican anti-imperial legacies of Rousseau and Herder. But they diluted or abandoned their predecessors’ national egalitarianism, which rejected any criteria grounding rights to self-government on facts created by past conquests, accidents of geography, or size.

Self-Government and Empire

The revolutions of 1848–9 swept national issues to the forefront of political debates in Europe. The uprisings were sparked by liberal and left-wing movements for constitutional and social reform. But in the Habsburg Empire with its large Hungarian, Slav, and Romanian populations, the revolutions soon turned into revolts by stateless ‘nationalities’, as they were called, against foreign and imperial rule. This threat to the survival of one of Europe’s venerable Great Powers gave fresh urgency to discussions about which peoples were entitled to national independence. Though couched in the language of general principles, the discussions were highly politicized. In 1848 the French Foreign Minister Alphonse de Lamartine announced that a universal ‘ principe de nationalité ’ authorized France to give military aid to any movement of subject nationalities in Europe. As a young Karl Marx (1818–83) was quick to observe, any such ‘principle’ defined and declared unilaterally was sure to be invoked in opportunistic ways. Each competing Great Power—a rank at that time comprising the French, British, and Russians, with the multinational Austrian and Ottoman empires threatened with disintegration—would use it selectively to support national movements that weakened their rivals. 26

Marx’s British contemporary John Stuart Mill (1806–73) offered a far less cynical analysis of the newly articulated principe de nationalité . Though some of his views are widely criticized today, Mill’s attempt to evaluate national claims according to general principles, rather than particular political interests, was unusually sensitive for his times. During and after the 1848 Revolutions, Mill sought to defend aspirations for self-government, especially against authoritarian empires, without encouraging ethnocentric nationalism. In 1861 he outlined a complex set of standards that combined moral principles with pragmatic considerations. One key principle was that ‘the question of government ought to be decided by the governed’. A corollary was that where ‘the sentiment of nationality exists in any force, there is a prima facie case for uniting all the members’ under a single government ‘to themselves apart’.

Had Mill made this principle of consent to government the non-negotiable bedrock of his criteria, his position would have resembled Rousseau’s. But he went on to argue that the general principle of consent should be weighed against other, equally compelling considerations, both moral and pragmatic. The moral considerations were expressed in Mill’s notion of ‘utility’, which he claimed embodied the highest ‘interests of humanity’. The most important such interests are advanced by the expansion of individual liberty and forms of government that promote that liberty. Mill proposed that specific national claims should be judged against this standard. This suggested pragmatic criteria for deciding which national claims should be given priority. One condition for national independence was geographical, and called for the integration of diverse populations into one national state. Since countries such as Hungary had populations ‘so mixed up as to be incapable of local separation’, they must try ‘to make a virtue of necessity, and reconcile themselves to living together under equal rights and laws’. Another criterion linked considerations of geopolitical viability—which favoured the formation of larger, culturally integrated political units—with the ‘moral and social consideration’ that human progress required the gradual absorption of less advanced peoples into the more advanced. The principle of nationality should not hold out vain hopes of survival to peoples who formed ‘an inferior and more backward portion of the human race’ such as Bretons, Welshmen, and Basques, who could only benefit from assimilation to larger, more powerful nations. 27

While in Europe Mill’s concept of utility advised the absorption of smaller nationalities, matters were less straightforward in the non-European colonies. A civil servant who worked for many years on colonial issues, Mill understood that assimilation was impossible where the ostensibly more civilized nation was much less populous than the less, as with the English in India. In such cases it was clearer to Mill than to many of his contemporaries that colonial rule was ultimately untenable. However backward at present, native majority populations were bound to demand self-government sooner or later. If they achieved it through means that also improved local standards of civilization, this would serve the overall utility of the human species. Distinguishing between countries whose population was already ‘in a sufficiently advanced state to be fitted for representative government’ and ‘others which have not attained that state’, Mill urged the European Powers and ‘colonies of European race’ to ‘use their superiority’ to try to prepare the latter—mainly non-European peoples—‘for a higher stage of improvement’, including eventual self-government. Thus Mill’s criteria were more generous to non-European aspirations for independence than to those of the less progressive European ‘nationalities’. But his utilitarian standard was still paternalistic. For peoples deemed unready for self-government, he wrote, ‘it is often better for them to be under the despotism of foreigners than of natives, when those foreigners are more advanced in civilization’ than themselves.

Despite Mill’s commitments to general principles of freedom and consent of the governed, then, his final touchstone for evaluating national claims was the teleological standard of utility. In deciding how to address national claims, consent could be trumped by contestable judgements about the ‘highest good for the human race’, or about what cultural or geopolitical facts identified a people as capable of self-government. These standards sharply limited the application of his principles of self-government. But as with any teleological standards that give particular ends precedence over other moral claims, Mill’s were inherently controversial, and therefore tended to provoke more arguments than they settled. Mill expressed little concern about the resentments and conflicts that might arise from such inegalitarian national principles. In contrast to Marx, he did not anticipate the proliferation of frustrated national claims, or expect them to produce ever more violent conflicts. Nor did he seem to realize that the nationality principle itself could become a plaything of both liberal and despotic powers, as all parties and their intellectual spokesmen sought to define and apply it in ways that helped their own cause. Instead Mill assumed—despite evidence to the contrary—that rising national demands would somehow be adjudicated by a fair-minded club of civilized nation states, led by a wholly impartial Britain. 28

The presumption that a few Western Powers were entitled to determine whether and when to grant other peoples self-government provoked resistance, intellectual as well as political, in less highly ranked nations. One of the most balanced critiques of such paternalistic doctrines came from a non-European admirer of Mill, the best-selling Japanese liberal philosopher Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835–1901). In his Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1874) Fukuzawa accepted Mill’s distinction between progressive and backward peoples, placed the Japanese in the latter category, and outlined far-reaching reforms aimed at ending his country’s backwardness. But he rejected the notion that backward nations must be educated by the more civilized before they could demand independence on terms of equality. Even the least advanced peoples must undertake reforms of their own accord, and pursue progress in education and representative government without the tutelage of supposedly advanced nations. Imposed by foreigners, any measures taken toward advancement would be seen as illegitimate, and foster xenophobic backlashes. Mill and other Western liberals dangerously underestimated ‘how hateful, how infuriating, and how painful’ was the ‘imbalance of power’ for the backward, especially when their Western mentors paid ‘lip service…to equality of rights between nations’. 29

While pursuing reforms on largely western models, some modernizing nationalists drew on an earlier British argument that stressed the continuity of older national bonds. In a treatise widely read throughout Europe and beyond, the Anglo-Irish philosopher and Whig MP Edmund Burke wrote in 1790:

We wished to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers.…In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood; binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties; adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections… 30

Burke described this conception—at once historical and ethnic in its emphasis on natural ties of blood—as a choice made by generations of Britons aimed at strengthening subjects’ loyalty toward the state. This came to be seen as a pragmatic, evolutionary ‘English model’ of nationhood that others might try to emulate. It exerted a tremendous influence over nation-builders in many countries, especially those with monarchies, whose political elites wanted to implement modernizing reforms in a controlled way ‘from above’. The most successful nation states, these reformers believed, were those that could represent their ‘body’ of subjects through images of familial ties, thereby fostering affectionate respect for traditional authorities. Moderate anti-republican German authors such as Hegel adopted elements of Burke’s organic-historic conception. When in the 1870s and 1880s Japanese imperial authorities sought foreign advice on drafting a new constitution, German advisers suggested the English parliamentary system as a constitutional ideal, and key Japanese authors of the Meiji Constitution cited Burke’s treatise as an important source for their concept of nationality.

Imperialism, Radical Nationalism, and Race

It makes little sense to examine the rise of radical fin de siècle nationalism in any country or region without considering the wider context of competition for empire. Radical nationalism can take many forms, but all involve perceptions of threats to a nation’s survival or standing. Typically, it seeks to intensify efforts to promote strong forms of identity through national education, media, and administrative centralization. But unlike garden-variety defensive nationalism, which aims above all to erect barriers against foreign interactions, radical nationalism lashes out against actual or potential foes by adopting policies of international activism. These include intensified commercial, territorial, and military expansion, often combined with a dismissive attitude to moral and legal restraints. Radical nationalism in the late nineteenth century was not primarily the product of ethnic or revolutionary politics in particular countries; it was an international phenomenon whose spokesmen included moderate liberal and republican thinkers. In the 1840s Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) argued that only an aggressive colonial policy could preserve France’s global influence and national standing vis-à-vis rival powers. Requisite measures included the transfer of a large ‘European population that will protect and guarantee the territory we have conquered’, the systematic desolation of local tribes, and the ‘interdiction of commerce’. Significantly, de Tocqueville dispensed with any justifications invoking the higher good of humanity; in the struggle to defend France’s standing among rival European empires, the overriding good was particular and national. 31

In the century’s last decades, radical nationalism gained momentum from the idea that national hierarchies were determined by the quality of biological ‘races’ in which nations partook. Racial doctrines gained a wide following in academic, political, and military circles throughout Europe, and the language of racial inequality began to seep into nationalist doctrines across the political spectrum. Race doctrine had two main elements. One was a radicalized version of earlier empirical criteria for discriminating among national claims: an assertion of natural inequality among human groups identifiable by observable characteristics. By tying inequalities to deterministic biology, racial doctrines helped to naturalize claims of superiority and inferiority between national groups, making them more absolute. The other element was a regressive, paranoid teleology: inferior race groups were thought to possess a brutish power that endangered the survival of higher races and their civilizations. The targets of these fears included rebellious colonized populations, but also other major European ‘races’ that were deemed more or less progressive as forces for empire: the Germanic, the Gallic, the Slavic, the Jewish. Precise definitions of these races and the ranks assigned to them constantly altered in different countries, according to the social conflicts and alliances of the day. Playing on social and international anxieties about loss of status in relation to newly assertive populations, racial thinking came to serve as one of the main ideological strategies of international positioning and repositioning, and as a justification for aggressive imperialism. Far from being simply a new variant of defensive ethnocentrism or authoritarianism, doctrines of racial inequality dovetailed just as well with radicalized civic and liberal nationalism, which had already become less egalitarian over the course of the nineteenth century.

Deploring these developments in the late 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) opined that national values had become mere herd-thinking, ‘bovine nationalism’. The quest for strong group identities had degenerated into a demand for cultural, then racial unity, producing an irrational fear of minorities—especially those like the Jews whose time-tested identity appeared threatening to nations ‘whose type is still weak and undetermined’. 32 By the early 1930s the term ‘nationalism’ was associated almost exclusively with movements that placed the ends of particular nations above wider considerations of order or justice. 33 Nietzsche expected the politics of radical nationalism in Europe to be succeeded by a European union, in which national rights would be limited by confederal and supernational duties. The earliest defenders of nationalism, notably Rousseau, had called for similar limits on national claims. With nationalism as with many political ideas, sometimes the oldest versions see furthest ahead.

1 R. Beiner (ed.) (1999) ‘Introduction’, Theorizing Nationalism , Albany, NY, 2 .

2 L. Greenfeld (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity , Cambridge, MA .

3 See E. Benner (2011) ‘The Nation State’, in A. Wood (ed.) The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Philosophy , Cambridge , ch. 23.

Rousseau’s concept of the General Will has often been interpreted in a collectivist manner, starting with French revolutionaries who claimed Rousseauian inspiration for forms of republican nationalism that were intolerant of individual and minority rights. Nothing, however, could be further from the tenor of Rousseau’s own basic principles. These required respect for equal individual freedom, and hence protection for conscientious disagreements expressed within the limits of law.

Excepting those of Kant and Paine.

John Locke’s arguments reflected and reinforced contemporary British justifications for colonial expansion in the Americas. Rousseau sharply criticized Locke’s and other inegalitarian doctrines that purported to be based on natural law.

In the eighteenth century, the ancient Greek idea that philosophers could give valuable advice on how to found or reconstitute polities was not considered utopian. Rousseau’s arguments did influence nation-building policies in Poland as well as in republican France, albeit not always in ways that adhered to his deepest principles. Polish reformers asked several well-known Francophone philosophers to submit advice on a new constitution, and there is no evidence that Rousseau’s proposals were well received at the time. This is unsurprising, since he urged Poland’s aristocratic lawmakers to adopt far-reaching reforms that would make the constitution more popular and representative. His ideas were, however, cited as an influence on the Polish constitution of May 1791.

8 J.-J. Rousseau (1997) ‘Considerations on the Government of Poland’, in V. Gourevitch (ed.) The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings , Cambridge, 177–60 .

Poland underwent three partitions between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, first in 1772—the year Rousseau completed his Project—and the last in 1795. Poland was thereby deprived of independence until 1918. This alleged injustice committed by Great Powers against a large, long-established polity became the first major cause célebre for the idea of national freedom.

See Chapter 2 by Peter Burke for earlier ideas about language and nation.

11 J. G. Herder (1877–1913) ‘Briefe zu Beförderung der Humanität’ (‘Letters for the Advancement of Humanity’), in B. Suphan (ed.) (1877–1913) Sämtliche Werke , vol. 7, Berlin, 65–8 .

J. G. Herder, ‘Idee zum ersten patriotischen Institut für den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands’, in Suphan (ed.) Sämtliche Werke , vol. 16, 600–12.

13 Herder (2002) ‘Letters for the Advancement of Humanity’, in M. N. Forster (ed.) Herder: Philosophical Writings , Cambridge, 377 .

14 J. G. Herder (1997) ‘The Slavs’, in H. Adler and E. A. Menze (eds.) Herder on World History: An Anthology , New York, 300–1 .

15 J. G. Herder (2002) ‘Treatise on the Origin of Language’, in Forster (ed.), 150–4 .

16 Herder (2002) ‘Letters Concerning the Progress of Humanity’, in Forster (ed.), 365 .

17 J. G. Herder (2002) ‘This too a Philosophy of History’, in Forster (ed.), 297 . This is one of the first recorded uses of the word ‘nationalism’ in any language.

18 I. Kant (1991) ‘Reviews of Herder’s Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind’, in H. Reiss (ed.) Political Writings , Cambridge, 201–20 .

For the role of nationalism in these revolutions, see Chapter 6 by Don Doyle and Eric Van Young and Chapter 7 by Michael Rowe.

This view is more reasonably based on one of Fichte’s earlier, pre-nationalist texts where, echoing French Jacobin doctrines, he defended a strongly unitary form of republican nationalism and attacked various types of ‘state within the state’—including that allegedly formed by the Jews.

21 J. G. Fichte , Addresses to the German Nation trans. and ed. G. A. Kelly (1968), New York, 184 . There is now a more recent English version available in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series edited by Gregory Moore (2008).

22 Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation , 118–20, 126, 184.

23 G. W. F. Hegel (1999) ‘The German Constitution’, in L. Dickey and H. B. Nisbet (eds.) Hegel: Political Writings , Cambridge, 6–101 .

24 G. W. F. Hegel , Philosophy of Right , ed. T. M. Knox (1967), Oxford, 208–23 , 297.

25 Hegel, Philosophy of Right , 217–19; G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Mind , ed. W. Wallace (1971) Oxford, 279 .

For more detail on Marx, Marxist and socialist views of nationalism, see Chapter 32 by John Schwarzmantel.

27 J. S. Mill (1991) ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, in J. Gray (ed.) On Liberty and Other Essays , Oxford, 430–3 , 217.

28 Mill, ‘Considerations on Representative Government’ , 449–67.

29 Y. Fukuzawa (1970) An Outline of a Theory of Civilization , ed. David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst, Tokyo, 171–98 .

30 E. Burke , Reflections on the Revolution in France , ed. F. G. Selby (1890), London, 34–7 .

31 A. de Tocqueville , Writings on Empire and Slavery , ed. J. Pitts (2001), Baltimore, 145, 70–1 . In 1841 de Tocqueville wrote to Mill that a nation like France ‘must not be suffered to believe that its place in the world is diminished…and to console herself…with peaceful prosperity at whatever cost, and with the well-being of each individual’. Mill’s stern reply criticized the French obsession with national status. Even ‘the most stupid and ignorant person’ in England, he insisted—inadvertently exposing his own national blind spot—was unconcerned with such insubstantial things as national glory. H. O. Pappé (1998) ‘Mill and Tocqueville’, in G. W. Smith (ed.) J. S. Mill’s Social and Political Theory , London, 123–5 .

32 F. Nietzsche , Beyond Good and Evil , trans. and intro. R. J. Hollingdale (1991), Harmondsworth, 102–3 , 162–9. Nietzsche suggested that in order to calm the hysteria ‘it would perhaps be a good idea to eject the anti-Semitic ranters from the country’.

See Chapter 21 by Oliver Zimmer and Chapter 29 by Roger Eatwell.

Suggested Further Reading

Arendt, H. ( 1951 ) The Origins of Totalitarianism , New York.

Google Scholar

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Barnard, F. M. ( 1988 ) Self-Direction and Political Legitimacy: Rousseau and Herder , Oxford.

Benner, E. ( 1995 ) Really Existing Nationalisms , Oxford.

Berlin, I. ( 1955 ) ‘Nationalism: Past Neglect, Present Power’, in Hardy, H. (ed.) Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas , Oxford.

Dahbour, O. and Ishay, M. R. (eds.) ( 1995 ) The Nationalism Reader , New York.

Engelbrecht, H. C. ( 1933 ) Johann Gottlieb Fichte: A Study of his Political Writings with Special Reference to his Nationalism , New York.

Hont, I. ( 1994 ) ‘The Permanent Crisis of a Divided Mankind: “Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State” in Historical Perspective’, Political Studies , 42, 166–231.

Kamenka, E. (ed.) ( 1976 ) Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea , London.

Kedourie, E. ( 1960 ) Nationalism , London.

Varouxakis, G. ( 2002 ) Mill on Nationality , New York.

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Notes on Nationalism

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of  the Orwell Estate . The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity – please consider making a donation or becoming a Friend of the Foundation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere. 

Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longueur , and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word , we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation – that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.

By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. [1] But secondly ­– and this is much more important – I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.

So long as it is applied merely to the more notorious and identifiable nationalist movements in Germany, Japan, and other countries, all this is obvious enough. Confronted with a phenomenon like Nazism, which we can observe from the outside, nearly all of us would say much the same things about it. But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word ‘nationalism’ for lack of a better. Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movements and tendencies as Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one’s own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.

It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist – that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating – but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the up-grade and some hated rival is on the down-grade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also – since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself – unshakeably certain of being in the right.

Now that I have given this lengthy definition, I think it will be admitted that the habit of mind I am talking about is widespread among the English intelligentsia, and more widespread there than among the mass of the people. For those who feel deeply about contemporary politics, certain topics have become so infected by considerations of prestige that a genuinely rational approach to them is almost impossible. Out of the hundreds of examples that one might choose, take this question: Which of the three great allies, the U.S.S.R., Britain and the U.S.A., has contributed most to the defeat of Germany? In theory it should be possible to give a reasoned and perhaps even a conclusive answer to this question. In practice, however, the necessary calculations cannot be made, because anyone likely to bother his head about such a question would inevitably see it in terms of competitive prestige. He would therefore start by deciding in favour of Russia, Britain or America as the case might be, and only after this would begin searching for arguments that seemed to support his case. And there are whole strings of kindred questions to which you can only get an honest answer from someone who is indifferent to the whole subject involved, and whose opinion on it is probably worthless in any case. Hence, partly, the remarkable failure in our time of political and military prediction. It is curious to reflect that out of all the ‘experts’ of all the schools, there was not a single one who was able to foresee so likely an event as the Russo-German Pact of 1939. [2] And when news of the Pact broke, the most wildly divergent explanations were of it were given, and predictions were made which were falsified almost immediately, being based in nearly every case not on a study of probabilities but on a desire to make the U.S.S.R. seem good or bad, strong or weak. Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties. [3] And aesthetic judgements, especially literary judgements, are often corrupted in the same way as political ones. It would be difficult for an Indian nationalist to enjoy reading Kipling or for a Conservative to see merit in Mayakovsky, and there is always a temptation to claim that any book whose tendency one disagrees with must be a bad book from a literary point of view. People of strongly nationalistic outlook often perform this sleight of hand without being conscious of dishonesty.

In England, if one simply considers the number of people involved, it is probable that the dominant form of nationalism is old-fashioned British jingoism. It is certain that this is still widespread, and much more so than most observers would have believed a dozen years ago. However, in this essay I am concerned chiefly with the reactions of the intelligentsia, among whom jingoism and even patriotism of the old kind are almost dead, though they now seem to be reviving among a minority. Among the intelligentsia, it hardly needs saying that the dominant form of nationalism is Communism ­– using this word in a very loose sense, to include not merely Communist Party members but ‘fellow-travellers’ and russophiles generally. A Communist, for my purpose here, is one who looks upon the U.S.S.R. as his Fatherland and feels it his duty to justify Russian policy and advance Russian interests at all costs. Obviously such people abound in England today, and their direct and indirect influence is very great. But many other forms of nationalism also flourish, and it is by noticing the points of resemblance between different and even seemingly opposed currents of thought that one can best get the matter into perspective.

Ten or twenty years ago, the form of nationalism most closely corresponding to Communism today was political Catholicism. Its most outstanding exponent – though he was perhaps an extreme case rather than a typical one – was G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton was a writer of considerable talent who chose to suppress both his sensibilities and his intellectual honesty in the cause of Roman Catholic propaganda. During the last twenty years or so of his life, his entire output was in reality an endless repetition of the same thing, under its laboured cleverness as simple and boring as ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians’. Every book that he wrote, every paragraph, every sentence, every incident in every story, every scrap of dialogue, had to demonstrate beyond possibility of mistake the superiority of the Catholic over the Protestant or the pagan. But Chesterton was not content to think of this superiority as merely intellectual or spiritual: it had to be translated into terms of national prestige and military power, which entailed an ignorant idealization of the Latin countries, especially France. Chesterton had not lived long in France, and his picture of it – as a land of Catholic peasants incessantly singing the Marseillaise over glasses of red wine – had about as much relation to reality as Chu Chin Chow has to everyday life in Baghdad. And with this went not only an enormous over-estimation of French military power (both before and after 1914-18 he maintained that France, by itself, was stronger than Germany), but a silly and vulgar glorification of the actual process of war. Chesterton’s battle poems, such as ‘Lepanto’ or ‘The Ballad of Saint Barbara’, make ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ read like a pacifist tract: they are perhaps the most tawdry bits of bombast to be found in our language. The interesting thing is that had the romantic rubbish which he habitually wrote about France and the French army been written by somebody else about Britain and the British army, he would have been the first to jeer. In home politics he was a Little Englander, a true hater of jingoism and imperialism, and according to his lights a true friend of democracy. Yet when he looked outwards into the international field, he could forsake his principles without even noticing he was doing so. Thus, his almost mystical belief in the virtues of democracy did not prevent him from admiring Mussolini. Mussolini had destroyed the representative government and the freedom of the press for which Chesterton had struggled so hard at home, but Mussolini was an Italian and had made Italy strong, and that settled the matter. Nor did Chesterton ever find a word to say about imperialism and the conquest of coloured races when they were practised by Italians or Frenchmen. His hold on reality, his literary taste, and even to some extent his moral sense, were dislocated as soon as his nationalistic loyalties were involved.

Obviously there are considerable resemblances between political Catholicism, as exemplified by Chesterton, and Communism. So there are between either of these and for instance Scottish nationalism, Zionism, Antisemitism or Trotskyism. It would be an oversimplification to say that all forms of nationalism are the same, even in their mental atmosphere, but there are certain rules that hold good in all cases. The following are the principal characteristics of nationalist thought:

Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit. It is difficult if not impossible for any nationalist to conceal his allegiance. The smallest slur upon his own unit, or any implied praise of a rival organization, fills him with uneasiness which he can only relieve by making some sharp retort. If the chosen unit is an actual country, such as Ireland or India, he will generally claim superiority for it not only in military power and political virtue, but in art, literature, sport, structure of the language, the physical beauty of the inhabitants, and perhaps even in climate, scenery and cooking. He will show great sensitiveness about such things as the correct display of flags, relative size of headlines and the order in which different countries are named. [4] Nomenclature plays a very important part in nationalist thought. Countries which have won their independence or gone through a nationalist revolution usually change their names, and any country or other unit round which strong feelings revolve is likely to have several names, each of them carrying a different implication. The two sides of the Spanish Civil War had between them nine or ten names expressing different degrees of love and hatred. Some of these names (e.g. ‘Patriots’ for Franco-supporters, or ‘Loyalists’ for Government-supporters) were frankly question-begging, and there was no single one of them which the two rival factions could have agreed to use. All nationalists consider it a duty to spread their own language to the detriment of rival languages, and among English-speakers this struggle reappears in subtler form as a struggle between dialects. Anglophobe Americans will refuse to use a slang phrase if they know it to be of British origin, and the conflict between Latinizers and Germanizers often has nationalist motives behind it. Scottish nationalists insist on the superiority of Lowland Scots, and Socialists whose nationalism takes the form of class hatred tirade against the B.B.C. accent and even the broad A. One could multiply instances. Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets in shooting galleries.

Instability. The intensity with which they are held does not prevent nationalist loyalties from being transferable. To begin with, as I have pointed out already, they can be and often are fastened upon some foreign country. One quite commonly finds that great national leaders, or the founders of nationalist movements, do not even belong to the country they have glorified. Sometimes they are outright foreigners, or more often they come from peripheral areas where nationality is doubtful. Examples are Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, de Valera, Disraeli, Poincaré, Beaverbrook. The Pan-German movement was in part the creation of an Englishman, Houston Chamberlain. For the past fifty or a hundred years, transferred nationalism has been a common phenomenon among literary intellectuals. With Lafcadio Hearne the transference was to Japan, with Carlyle and many others of his time to Germany, and in our own age it is usually to Russia. But the peculiarly interesting fact is that re -transference is also possible. A country or other unit which has been worshipped for years may suddenly become detestable, and some other object of affection may take its place with almost no interval. In the first version of H. G. Wells’s Outline of History , and others of his writings about that time, one finds the United States praised almost as extravagantly as Russia is praised by Communists today: yet within a few years this uncritical admiration had turned into hostility. The bigoted Communist who changes in a space of weeks, or even of days, into an equally bigoted Trotskyist is a common spectacle. In continental Europe Fascist movements were largely recruited from among Communists, and the opposite process may well happen within the next few years. What remains constant in the nationalist is his own state of mind: the object of his feelings is changeable, and may be imaginary.

But for an intellectual, transference has an important function which I have already mentioned shortly in connection with Chesterton. It makes it possible for him to be much more nationalistic – more vulgar, more silly, more malignant, more dishonest – than he could ever be on behalf of his native country, or any unit of which he had real knowledge. When one sees the slavish or boastful rubbish that is written about Stalin, the Red army, etc. by fairly intelligent and sensitive people, one realizes that this is only possible because some kind of dislocation has taken place. In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion – that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware – will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack – all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognized for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one’s conduct.

Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians – which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians. [5] It is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive), the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of Indians from the guns, or Cromwell’s soldiers slashing Irishwomen’s faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is felt that they were done in the ‘right’ cause. If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world: and yet in not one single case were these atrocities – in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna – believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.

Every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered. He spends part of his time in a fantasy world in which things happen as they should – in which, for example, the Spanish Armada was a success or the Russian Revolution was crushed in 1918 – and he will transfer fragments of this world to the history books whenever possible. Much of the propagandist writing of our time amounts to plain forgery. Material facts are suppressed, dates altered, quotations removed from their context and doctored so as to change their meaning. Events which, it is felt, ought not to have happened are left unmentioned and ultimately denied. [6] In 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek boiled hundreds of Communists alive, and yet within ten years he had become one of the heroes of the Left. The re-alignment of world politics had brought him into the anti-Fascist camp, and so it was felt that the boiling of the Communists ‘didn’t count’, or perhaps had not happened. The primary aim of propaganda is, of course, to influence contemporary opinion, but those who rewrite history do probably believe with part of their minds that they are actually thrusting facts into the past. When one considers the elaborate forgeries that have been committed in order to show that Trotsky did not play a valuable part in the Russian civil war, it is difficult to feel that the people responsible are merely lying. More probably they feel that their own version was what happened in the sight of God, and that one is justified in rearranging the records accordingly.

Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connexion with the physical world.

I have examined as best as I can the mental habits which are common to all forms of nationalism. The next thing is to classify those forms, but obviously this cannot be done comprehensively. Nationalism is an enormous subject. The world is tormented by innumerable delusions and hatreds which cut across one another in an extremely complex way, and some of the most sinister of them have not yet impinged on the European consciousness. In this essay I am concerned with nationalism as it occurs among the English intelligentsia. In them, much more than in ordinary English people, it is unmixed with patriotism and can therefore can be studied pure. Below are listed the varieties of nationalism now flourishing among English intellectuals, with such comments as seem to be needed. It is convenient to use three headings, Positive, Transferred and Negative, though some varieties will fit into more than one category:

Positive Nationalism

1. Neo-Toryism. Exemplified by such people as Lord Elton, A. P. Herbert, G. M. Young, Professor Pickthorn, by the literature of the Tory Reform Committee, and by such magazines as the New English Review and the Nineteenth Century and After . The real motive force of neo-Toryism, giving it its nationalistic character and differentiating it from ordinary Conservatism, is the desire not to recognize that British power and influence have declined. Even those who are realistic enough to see that Britain’s military position is not what it was, tend to claim that ‘English ideas’ (usually left undefined) must dominate the world. All neo-Tories are anti-Russian, but sometimes the main emphasis is anti-American. The significant thing is that this school of thought seems to be gaining ground among youngish intellectual, sometimes ex-Communists, who have passed through the usual process of disillusionment and become disillusioned with that. The anglophobe who suddenly becomes violently pro-British is a fairly common figure. Writers who illustrate this tendency are F. A. Voigt, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn Waugh, Hugh Kingsmill, and a psychologically similar development can be observed in T. S. Eliot, Wyndham Lewis, and various of their followers.

2. Celtic Nationalism. Welsh, Irish and Scottish nationalism have points of difference but are alike in their anti-English orientation. Members of all three movements have opposed the war while continuing to describe themselves as pro-Russian, and the lunatic fringe has even contrived to be simultaneously pro-Russian and pro-Nazi. But Celtic nationalism is not the same thing as anglophobia. Its motive force is a belief in the past and future greatness of the Celtic peoples, and it has a strong tinge of racialism. The Celt is supposed to be spiritually superior to the Saxon – simpler, more creative, less vulgar, less snobbish, etc. – but the usual power hunger is there under the surface. One symptom of it is the delusion that Eire, Scotland or even Wales could preserve its independence unaided and owes nothing to British protection. Among writers, good examples of this school of thought are Hugh McDiarmid and Sean O’Casey. No modern Irish writer, even of the stature of Yeats or Joyce, is completely free from traces of nationalism.

3. Zionism. This has the unusual characteristics of a nationalist movement, but the American variant of it seems to be more violent and malignant than the British. I classify it under Direct and not Transferred nationalism because it flourishes almost exclusively among the Jews themselves. In England, for several rather incongruous reasons, the intelligentsia are mostly pro-Jew on the Palestine issue, but they do not feel strongly about it. All English people of goodwill are also pro-Jew in the sense of disapproving of Nazi persecution. But any actual nationalistic loyalty, or belief in the innate superiority of Jews, is hardly to be found among Gentiles:

Transferred Nationalism

1. Communism

2. Political Catholicism

3. Colour Feeling. The old-style contemptuous attitude towards ‘natives’ has been much weakened in England, and various pseudo-scientific theories emphasizing the superiority of the white race have been abandoned. [7] Among the intelligentsia, colour feeling only occurs in the transposed form, that is, as a belief in the innate superiority of the coloured races. This is now increasingly common among English intellectuals, probably resulting more often from masochism and sexual frustration than from contact with the Oriental and Negro nationalist movements. Even among those who do not feel strongly on the colour question, snobbery and imitation have a powerful influence. Almost any English intellectual would be scandalized by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it. Nationalistic attachment to the coloured races is usually mixed up with the belief that their sex lives are superior, and there is a large underground mythology about the sexual prowess of Negroes.

4. Class Feeling. Among upper-class and middle-class intellectuals, only in the transposed form – i.e. as a belief in the superiority of the proletariat. Here again, inside the intelligentsia, the pressure of public opinion is overwhelming. Nationalistic loyalty towards the proletariat, and most vicious theoretical hatred of the bourgeoisie, can and often do co-exist with ordinary snobbishness in everyday life.

5. Pacifism. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransferred.

Negative Nationalism

1. Anglophobia. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell or when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, ‘enlightened’ opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

2. Anti-Semitism. There is little evidence about this at present, because the Nazi persecutions have made it necessary for any thinking person to side with the Jews against their oppressors. Anyone educated enough to have heard the word ‘antisemitism’ claims as a matter of course to be free of it, and anti-Jewish remarks are carefully eliminated from all classes of literature. Actually, antisemitism appears to be widespread, even among intellectuals, and the general conspiracy of silence probably helps exacerbate it. People of Left opinions are not immune to it, and their attitude is sometimes affected by the fact that Trotskyists and Anarchists tend to be Jews. But antisemitism comes more naturally to people of Conservative tendency, who suspect Jews of weakening national morale and diluting the national culture. Neo-Tories and political Catholics are always liable to succumb to antisemitism, at least intermittently.

3. Trotskyism. This word is used so loosely as to include Anarchists, democratic Socialists and even Liberals. I use it here to mean a doctrinaire Marxist whose main motive is hostility to the Stalin régime. Trotskyism can be better studied in obscure pamphlets or in papers like the Socialist Appeal than in the works of Trotsky himself, who was by no means a man of one idea. Although in some places, for instance in the United States, Trotskyism is able to attract a fairly large number of adherents and develop into an organized movement with a petty fuehrer of its own, its inspiration is essentially negative. The Trotskyist is against Stalin just as the Communist is for him, and, like the majority of Communists, he wants not so much to alter the external world as to feel that the battle for prestige is going in his own favour. In each case there is the same obsessive fixation on a single subject, the same inability to form a genuinely rational opinion based on probabilities. The fact that Trotskyists are everywhere a persecuted minority, and that the accusation usually made against them, i.e. of collaborating with the Fascists, is absolutely false, creates an impression that Trotskyism is intellectually and morally superior to Communism; but it is doubtful whether there is much difference. The most typical Trotskyists, in any case, are ex-Communists, and no one arrives at Trotskyism except via one of the left-wing movements. No Communist, unless tethered to his party by years of habit, is secure against a sudden lapse into Trotskyism. The opposite process does not seem to happen equally often, though there is no clear reason why it should not.

In the classification I have attempted above, it will seem that I have often exaggerated, oversimplified, made unwarranted assumptions and have left out of account the existence of ordinarily decent motives. This was inevitable, because in this essay I am trying to isolate and identify tendencies which exist in all our minds and pervert our thinking, without necessarily occurring in a pure state or operating continuously. It is important at this point to correct the over-simplified picture which I have been obliged to make. To begin with, one has no right to assume that everyone , or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Secondly, nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half-succumb to a belief which attracts him but which he knows to be absurd, and he may keep it out of his mind for long periods, only reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality, or when he is certain that no important issues are involved. Thirdly, a nationalistic creed may be adopted in good faith from non-nationalistic motives. Fourthly, several kinds of nationalism, even kinds that cancel out, can co-exist in the same person.

All the way through I have said, ‘the nationalist does this’ or ‘the nationalist does that’, using for purposes of illustration the extreme, barely sane type of nationalist who has no neutral areas in his mind and no interest in anything except the struggle for power. Actually such people are fairly common, but they are not worth the powder and shot. In real life Lord Elton, D. N. Pritt, Lady Houston, Ezra Pound, Lord Vanisttart, Father Coughlin and all the rest of their dreary tribe have to be fought against, but their intellectual deficiencies hardly need pointing out. Monomania is not interesting, and the fact that no nationalist of the more bigoted kind can write a book which still seems worth reading after a lapse of years has a certain deodorizing effect. But when one has admitted that nationalism has not triumphed everywhere, that there are still people whose judgements are not at the mercy of their desires, the fact does remain that the pressing problems – India, Poland, Palestine, the Spanish Civil War, the Moscow trials, the American Negroes, the Russo-German Pact or what have you – cannot be, or at least never are, discussed upon a reasonable level. The Eltons and Pritts and Coughlins, each of them simply an enormous mouth bellowing the same lie over and over again, are obviously extreme cases, but we deceive ourselves if we do not realize that we can all resemble them in unguarded moments. Let a certain note be struck, let this or that corn be trodden on – and it may be a corn whose very existence has been unsuspected hitherto — and the most fair-minded and sweet-tempered person may suddenly be transformed into a vicious partisan, anxious only to ‘score’ over his adversary and indifferent as to how many lies he tells or how many logical errors he commits in doing so. When Lloyd George, who was an opponent of the Boer War, announced in the House of Commons that the British communiqués, if one added them together, claimed the killing of more Boers than the whole Boer nation contained, it is recorded that Arthur Balfour rose to his feet and shouted ‘Cad!’ Very few people are proof against lapses of this type. The Negro snubbed by a white woman, the Englishman who hears England ignorantly criticized by an American, the Catholic apologist reminded of the Spanish Armada, will all react in much the same way. One prod to the nerve of nationalism, and the intellectual decencies can vanish, the past can be altered, and the plainest facts can be denied.

If one harbours anywhere in one’s mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:

British Tory:  Britain will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.

Communist:  If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.

Irish Nationalist:  Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.

Trotskyist:  The Stalin régime is accepted by the Russian masses.

Pacifist:  Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

All of these facts are grossly obvious if one’s emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable , and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the M.O.I. issued ‘as background’ a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when ‘our’ side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified – still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.

The reason for the rise and spread of nationalism is far too big a question to be raised here. It is enough to say that, in the forms in which it appears among English intellectuals, it is a distorted reflection of the frightful battles actually happening in the external world, and that its worst follies have been made possible by the breakdown of patriotism and religious belief. If one follows up this train of thought, one is in danger of being led into a species of Conservatism, or into political quietism. It can be plausibly argued, for instance – it is even probably true – that patriotism is an inoculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition. Or again, it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies, and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics – using the word in a wide sense – and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one’s own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it.

Author’s Notes

Polemic , GB – London, 1945

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Orwell Estate .

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Nationalism Essay for Students and Children

400 words essay on nationalism.

First of all, Nationalism is the concept of loyalty towards a nation. In Nationalism, this sentiment of loyalty must be present in every citizen. This ideology certainly has been present in humanity since time immemorial. Above all, it’s a concept that unites the people of a nation. It is also characterized by love for one’s nation. Nationalism is probably the most important factor in international politics.

Why Nationalism Is Important?

Nationalism happens because of common factors. The people of a nation share these common factors. These common factors are common language, history , culture, traditions, mentality, and territory. Thus a sense of belonging would certainly come in people. It would inevitably happen, whether you like it or not. Therefore, a feeling of unity and love would happen among national citizens. In this way, Nationalism gives strength to the people of the nation.

Nationalism has an inverse relationship with crime. It seems like crime rates are significantly lower in countries with strong Nationalism. This happens because Nationalism puts feelings of love towards fellow countrymen. Therefore, many people avoid committing a crime against their own countrymen. Similarly, corruption is also low in such countries. Individuals in whose heart is Nationalism, avoid corruption . This is because they feel guilty to harm their country.

Nationalism certainly increases the resolve of a nation to defend itself. There probably is a huge support for strengthening the military among nationalistic people. A strong military is certainly the best way of defending against foreign enemies. Countries with low Nationalism, probably don’t invest heavily in the military. This is because people with low Nationalism don’t favor strong militaries . Hence, these countries which don’t take Nationalism seriously are vulnerable.

Nationalism encourages environmental protection as well. People with high national pride would feel ashamed to pollute their nation. Therefore, such people would intentionally work for environment protection even without rules. In contrast, an individual with low Nationalism would throw garbage carelessly.

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Contemporary Nationalism

Nationalism took an ugly turn in the 20th century with the emergence of Fascism and Nazism. However, that was a negative side of Nationalism. Since then, many nations gave up the idea of aggressive Nationalism. This certainly did not mean that Nationalism in contemporary times got weak. People saw strong Nationalism in the United States and former USSR. There was a merger of Nationalism with economic ideologies like Capitalism and Socialism.

In the 21st century, there has been no shortage of Nationalism. The popular election of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is proof. Both these leaders strongly propagate Nationalism. Similarly, the election victory of other nationalistic leaders is more evidence.

Nationalism is a strong force in the world that is here to say. Nationalism has a negative side. However, this negative side certainly cannot undermine the significance of Nationalism. Without Nationalism, there would have been no advancement of Human Civilization.

500 Words Essay on Nationalism

Nationalism is an ideology which shows an individual’s love & devotion towards his nation.  It is actually people’s feelings for their nation as superior to all other nations. The concept of nationalism in India developed at the time of the Independence movement. This was the phase when people from all the areas/caste/religion etc collectively fought against British Raj for independence. Hence nationalism can be called as collective devotion of all the nationals towards their country.

Introduction of Nationalism in India:

The first world war (1919) had far-reaching consequences on the entire world. After the first world war, some major movements broke out in India like Satyagrah & Non-co-operation movement. This has sown the seeds of nationalism in Indians.  This era developed new social groups along with new modes of struggle. The major events like Jalianwala Bagh massacre & Khilafat movement had a strong impact on the people of India.

Thus, their collective struggle against colonialism brought them together and they have collectively developed a strong feeling of responsibility, accountability, love, and devotion for their country. This collective feeling of the Indian people was the start of the development of Nationalism.  Foundation of Indian National Congress in 1885 was the first organized expression of nationalism in India.

Basis of Rising of Nationalism in India

There could be several basis of rising of nationalism in India:

• The Britishers came to India as traders but slowly became rulers and started neglecting the interests of the Indians. This led to the feeling of oneness amongst Indians and hence slowly led to nationalism.
• India developed as a unified country in the 19 th & 20 th century due to well-structured governance system of Britishers. This has led to interlinking of the economic life of people, and hence nationalism.
• The spread of western education, especially the English language amongst educated Indians have helped the knowledgeable population of different linguistic origin to interact on a common platform and hence share their nationalist opinions.
• The researches by Indian and European scholars led to the rediscovery of the Indian past. The Indian scholars like Swami Vivekanand & European scholars like Max Mueller had done historical researched & had glorified India’s past in such a manner that Indian peoples developed a strong sense of nationalism & patriotism.
• The emergence of the press in the 19 th century has helped in the mobilization of people’s opinion thereby giving them a common platform to interact for independence motion and also to promote nationalism.
• Various reforms and social movements had helped Indian society to remove the social evils which were withholding the societal development and hence led to rejoining of society.
• The development of well-led railway network in India was a major boost in the transportation sector. Hence making it easy for the Indian population to connect with each other.
• The international events like the French revolution, Unification of Italy & Germany, etc.have  awakened the feelings of national consciousness amongst Indian people.

Though a lot of factors had led to rising of nationalism in India, the major role was played by First world war, Rowlatt act and Jaliawala bagh massacre. These major incidences have had a deep-down impact on the mind of Indians. These motivated them to fight against Britishers with a  strong feeling of Nationalism.  This feeling of nationalism was the main driving force for the independence struggle in India.

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19th-Century European Nationalism’s Impact on History Essay

In Europe, the 19 th century represented a period of markedly large changes within the socioeconomic and sociopolitical framework of European countries. However, among the most noticeable trends observed in the target setting on the specified time slot, the propensity toward nationalism developing across Europe represents the most peculiar change. Due to the secular nature of the specified change compared to the previous European history of nationalist trends, the described phenomenon launched a series of sociocultural alterations based on rational interpretations of liberty.

Though sharing certain characteristics across countries, European nationalism manifested itself quite differently in specific geopolitical contexts. Specifically, in Germany, the specified phenomenon created the basis for the further rise of the power of the working class, or the proletariat (Motadel 78). The outlined change created premises for the emergence of Marxism as one of the essential branches of Socialism (Hough 2). Therefore, the foundation for revolutionary movements was created in the specified context.

Similarly, in France, the focus on liberalism continued to expand and invite members of the working class to participate in the sociopolitical changes within the French community. Though the specified shift in the power balance within society was not as distinctive and immediate as in Germany, the trend toward a societal shift and the effort to address the issue of classism were evident in both cases. Admittedly, other unique traits of the specified sociopolitical and sociocultural environments defined the development of nationalist principles and the further differences in the outcomes. Specifically, the French interpretation of the subject matter caused reinforcement of the army and the development of the country’s military potential (Soroka and Krawatzek 165). The specified outcome stands in a rather sharp contrast to Germany, where social changes were the primary outcome of the observed phenomenon (Tanrıverdi 609). Therefore, the cultural contexts of Germany and France represented the settings where the principles of nationalism could evolve to produce unique outcomes.

Furthermore, the outlined example illustrates the presence of both continuity and change in European nationalism. Specifically, the dominant concept of proletariat fighting against class oppression and rising to power was central in all instances of European nationalism, therefore, representing continuity within the process of alterations on the European political arena. Simultaneously, change could be seen in all reiterations of nationalist movements within the European setting as each country developed a unique stance on the issue of nationalism (Liu and Khan 3). Specifically, while some states focused on the active promotion of civil liberties for members of the lower class, others reinforced their military structure, and some considered opportunities for further economic empowerment (Casaglia et al. 2). Nonetheless, the trend toward nationalism as the resurgence of national identity development was prominent in Europe on the specified time slot, indicating the need for a shift in political power and approach to socioeconomic and sociopolitical interactions.

Since the 18 th century nationalist tendencies occurring in Europe were characterized primarily by their secular nature, they evoked a range of sociocultural shifts within Europe as a direct effect of injecting rationality into the analysis of liberty. As a result, the overall shift in the sociopolitical and the associated sociocultural changes caused a vast revolutionary wave across Europe, with the needs of the working class being prioritized. The specified permutations of sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural relationships within Europe created premises for the further shifts in state politics in each country individually.

Works Cited

Casaglia, Anna, et al. “Interventions on European Nationalist Populism and Bordering in Time of Emergencies.” Political Geography , vol. 82, 2020, pp.1-10.

Hough, Peter. “Back to the Future: Environmental Security in Nineteenth Century Global Politics.” Global Security: Health, Science and Policy , vol. 4, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-13.

Liu, James H., and Sammyh S. Khan. “Implications of a Psychological Approach to Collective Remembering: Social Representations as Cultural Ground for Interpreting Survey and Experimental Results.” Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology , vol. 15, 2021, pp. 1-11.

Motadel, David. “Nationalist Internationalism in the Modern Age.” Contemporary European History , vol. 28, no.1, 2019, pp. 77-81.

Soroka, George, and Félix Krawatzek. “Nationalism, Democracy, and Memory Laws.” Journal of Democracy , vol. 30, no. 2, 2019, pp. 157-171.

Tanrıverdi, Ezgi. “The Phenomenon of Nationalism in Nation-State.” Journal of Human Sciences , vol. 19, no. 4, 2022, pp. 605-612.

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History Grade 11 - Topic 4 Essay Questions

Essay Question:

To what extent were Black South Africans were deprived of their political, economic, and social rights in the early 1900s and how did this reality pave the way for the rise of African Nationalism? Present an argument in support of your answer using relevant historical evidence. [1]

Background and historical overview:

There was no South Africa (as we know it today) before 1910.  Britain had defeated Boer Republics in the South African War which date from (1899–1903). There were four separate colonies: Cape, Natal, Orange River, Transvaal colonies and each were ruled by Britain. They needed support of white settlers in colonies to retain power. [2] In 1908, about 33 white delegates met behind closed doors to negotiate independence for Union of South Africa. The views and opinions of 85% of country’s future citizens (black people) not even considered in these discussions. British wanted investments protected, labour supplies assured, and agreed on the fundamental question to give political/economic power to white settlers. [3] This essay pushes back in time to analyse how this violent context in South African history served as an ideological backdrop for the rise of African nationalism in the country and elsewhere in the world.

The Union Constitution of 1910 placed political power in hands of white citizens. However, a small number of educated black, coloured citizens allowed to elect few representatives to Union parliament. [4] More generally, it was only whites who were granted the right to vote.  They imagined a ‘settler nation’ where was no room for blacks with rights. In this regard, white citizens called selves ‘Europeans’. Furthermore, all symbols of new nation, European language (mainly English and Dutch), religion, school history. In this view, African languages, histories, culture were portrayed as inferior. [5]

Therefore, racism was an integral feature in colonial societies, and this essentially meant that Africans were seen as members of inferior ‘tribes’ and thus should practise traditions in ‘native’ reserves. Whilst, on the other hand, in the settler (white) nation, black people were recognized only as workers in farms, mines, factories owned by whites. Thus, black people were denied of their political rights, cultural recognition, economic opportunities, because of these entrenched processes and politics of exclusion. In 1910 large numbers of black South African men were forced to become migrant workers on mines, factories, expanding commercial farms. In 1913, the infamous Natives Land Act, worsened the situation for black people as land allocated to black people by the Act was largely infertile and unsuitable for agriculture. [6]

Rise of African Nationalism:

In the 19th century, the Western-educated African, coloured, Indian middle class who grew up mainly in the Cape and Natal, mostly professional men (doctors, lawyers, teachers, newspaper editors) and were proud of their African, Muslim, Indian heritage embraced idea of progressive ‘colour-blind’ western civilisation that could benefit all people. This was a more worldly outlook or form of nationalism which recognized all non-white groupings across the colonial world as victims of colonial racism and violence. [7] However, another form of nationalism recognized the differences within the colonized groups and argued for a stricter and more specific definition of what it means to be African in a colonial world. These were some differences within the umbrella body of African nationalism and were firmly anchored during the course of the 20th century.

African Peoples’ Organization:

One of the African organisations that led to the rise of African nationalism was the African People’s Organisation (APO). At first the APO did not concern itself with rights of black South Africans. They committed themselves to the vision that all oppressed racial groups must work together to achieve anything. Therefore, a delegation was sent to London in 1909 to fight for rights for coloured (‘coloured’. In this context, ‘everyone who was a British subject in South Africa and who was not a European’). [8]

Natal Indian Congress:

Natal Indian Congress Natal Indian Congress (NIC) was an important influence in the development of non-racial African nationalism in South Africa. Arguably, it was one of the first organisations in South Africa to use word ‘congress’. It was formed in 1894 to mobilise the Indian opposition to racial discrimination in Colony. [9] The founder of this movement was MK Gandhi who later spearheaded a massive peaceful resistance (Satyagraha) to colonial rule. This protest forced Britain to grant independence to India, 1947. The NIC organised many protests and more generally campaigned for Indian rights. In 1908, hundreds of Indians gathered outside Johannesburg Mosque in protest against law that forced Indians to carry passes, passive resistance campaigns of Gandhi and NIC succeeded in Indians not having to carry passes. But, however, they failed to win full citizenship rights as the NIC did not join united national movement for rights of all citizens until 1930s, 1940s

South African Native National Congress (now known as African National Congress):

In response to Union in 1910, young African leaders (Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Richard Msimang, George Montsioa, Alfred Mangena) worked with established leaders of South African Native Convention to promote formation of a national organization. The larger aim was to form a national organisation that would unify various African groups. [10] On 8 January 1912, first African nationalist movement formed at a meeting in Bloemfontein. South African National Natives Congress (SANNC) were mainly attended by traditional chiefs, teachers, writers, intellectuals, businessmen. Most delegates had received missionary education. They strongly believed in 19th century values of ‘improvement’ and ‘progress’ of Africans into a global European ‘civilisation’ and culture. In 1924, the SANNC changed name to African National Congress (ANC), in order to assert an African identity within the movement. [11]

Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU):

The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union African protest movements that helped foster growing African nationalism in early 1920s . Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) was formed in 1919 was led by Clements Kadalie, Malawian worker. This figure had led successful strike of dockworkers in Cape Town. Mostly active among farmers and migrant workers. But, only temporarily away from their farms and was very difficult to organise. The central question to pose is to examine the ways in which the World War II influence the rise of African nationalism? Essentially, there were various ways that WW II influenced the rise of African nationalism. [12] Firstly, through the Atlantic Charter, AB Xuma’s, African claims in relation to this Charter. In addition, the influence of politicized soldiers returning from War had a significant impact.

The Atlantic Charter and AB Xuma’s African claims Churchill and Roosevelt issued the Atlantic Charter in 1941, describing the world they would like to see after WWII. To the ANC and African nationalists generally, the Atlantic Charter amounted to promise for freedom in Africa once war was over. Britain recruited thousands of African soldiers to fight in its armies (nearly two million Africans recruited as soldiers, porters, scouts for Allies during war). This persuaded Africans to sign up and Britain called it ‘a war for freedom’. [13] The soldiers returning home expected Britain to honour their sacrifice, however, the recognition they expected did not arrive and thus became bitter, discontented, and only had fought to protect interests of colonial powers only to return to exploitation and indignities of colonial rule.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, this essay has attempted to examine the historical circumstances in which black people were denied of their political, economic, and social rights in the early 1990s. There are various that must be acknowledged in order to have a granular understanding of the larger and longer history of African nationalism, and this examination may exceed the scope of this essay. However, the central argument made here is that the rise of African nationalism in all its different ethos and manifestations was premised on humanizing black people in various parts of the colonial world. To stress this point, African nationalism emerged as a vehicle of resistance and humanization. Finally, African nationalism cannot be read outside the international context (as shown throughout the paper), as we have to take into account various factor which effectively influenced the spurge of this ideological outlook in society.

This content was originally produced for the SAHO classroom by Ayabulela Ntwakumba & Thandile Xesi.

[1] National Senior Certificate.: “Grade 11 November 2019 History Paper 2 Exam,” National Senior Certificate, November 2019. Eastern Cape Province Education.

[2] Williams, Donovan. "African nationalism in South Africa: origins and problems." The Journal of African History 11, no. 3 (1970): 371-383.

[3] Feit, Edward. "Generational Conflict and African Nationalism in South Africa: The African National Congress, 1949-1959." The International Journal of African Historical Studies 5, no. 2 (1972): 181-202.

[4] Chipkin, Ivor. "The decline of African nationalism and the state of South Africa." Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 2 (2016): 215-227.

[5] Prinsloo, Mastin. "‘Behind the back of a declarative history’: Acts of erasure in Leon de Kock's Civilizing Barbarians: Missionary narrative and African response in nineteenth century South Africa." The English Academy Review 15, no. 1 (1998): 32-41.

[6] Gilmour, Rachael. "Missionaries, colonialism and language in nineteenth‐century South Africa." History Compass 5, no. 6 (2007): 1761-1777.

[7] Lester, Alan. Imperial networks: Creating identities in nineteenth-century South Africa and Britain. Routledge, 2005.

[8] Van der Ross, Richard E. "The founding of the African Peoples Organization in Cape Town in 1903 and the role of Dr. Abdurahman." (1975).

[9] Vahed, Goolam, and Ashwin Desai. "A case of ‘strategic ethnicity’? The Natal Indian Congress in the 1970s." African Historical Review 46, no. 1 (2014): 22-47.

[10] Suttner, Raymond. "The African National Congress centenary: a long and difficult journey." International Affairs 88, no. 4 (2012): 719-738.

[11] Houston, G. "Pixley ka Isaka Seme: African unity against racism." (2020).

[12] Xuma, A. B. "African National Congress invitation to emergency conference of all Africans."

[13] Kumalo, Simangaliso. "AB Xuma and the politics of racial accommodation versus equal citizenship and its implication for nation-building and power-sharing in South Africa."

• Bennett-Smyth, T., 2003, September. Transcontinental Connections: Alfred B Xuma and the African National Congress on the World Stage. In workshop on South Africa in the 1940s, Southern African Research Centre, Kingston, Canada.
• Chipkin, I., 2016. The decline of African nationalism and the state of South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 42(2), pp.215-227.
• Feit, E., 1972. Generational Conflict and African Nationalism in South Africa: The African National Congress, 1949-1959. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 5(2), pp.181-202.
• Kumalo, S., AB Xuma and the politics of racial accommodation versus equal citizenship and its implication for nation-building and power-sharing in South Africa.
• Moeti, M.T., 1982. ETHIOPIANISM: SEPARATIST ROOTS OF AFRICAN NATIONALISM IN SOUTH AFRICA.
• Rotberg, R., "African nationalism: concept or confusion?." The Journal of Modern African Studies 4, no. 1. pp. 33-46.
• Swan, M., 1984. The 1913 Natal Indian Strike. Journal of Southern African Studies, 10(2), pp.239-258.
• Vahed, G. and Desai, A., 2014. A case of ‘strategic ethnicity’? The Natal Indian Congress in the 1970s. African Historical Review, 46(1), pp.22-47.
• Van der Ross, R.E., 1975. “The founding of the African Peoples Organization in Cape Town in 1903 and the role of Dr. Abdurahman”.
• van Niekerk, R., 2014. SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE ANC: BACK TO THE FUTURE?. A Lula Moment for South Africa: Lessons from Brazil, pp.47-61.
• Williams, D., 1970. “African nationalism in South Africa: origins and problems”. The Journal of African History, 11(3), pp.371-383.

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The Background of Nationalism and Other Essays Readings in Philippine History

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John Leddy Phelan; The Background of Nationalism and Other Essays Readings in Philippine History. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 November 1966; 46 (4): 447–448. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-46.4.447

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Horacio de la Costa is a historian and Jesuit priest of outstanding distinction. His Jesuits in the Philippines published by the Harvard University Press is in fact the most distinguished monograph written by a Filipino scholar in the twentieth century. He is currently serving as provincial general of the Philippine province of the Society of Jesus, the first Filipino in history to hold this post.

While one may argue with some of the choices in his Readings in Philippine History , the overall selection of various interpretations of Philippine development from the sixteenth century to the present is judicious and comprehensive. No one could marshal a better collection, and most of us would do a much less satisfactory job. The usefulness of this book of readings, however, is largely confined to the classroom and for this purpose it was intended.

The Background of Nationalism and other Essays , on the other hand, is a thin volume. Yet it is stimulating, laced with fresh insights and lucidly written. The essays cover a multitude of interrelated topics ranging from sweeping interpretations of Philippine history to the current social revolution in Asia, from Rizal as a humanist, political thinker, and stylist to the role of religion in a free community. He warns contemporary nationalists not to overlook the Spanish colonial origins of Philippine nationhood, for he quite correctly points out how the pax hispanica did much to create the modern nation. His view is admirably balanced in that he assesses with urbanity and wit the various contributions that the Malays, the Chinese, the Spaniards, and the North Americans have made to the development of that unique culture. One would hope, as Philippine nationalism changes its character, as indeed it must under the impact of the social revolution sweeping Asia, that Philippine nationalists would heed Father de la Costa’s sage advice.

“Riding the Whirlwind” is perhaps the most suggestive essay of the lot. It is an admirably concise and penetrating historical explanation of the contemporary social upheaval in the Orient that deserves an attentive audience on the banks of the Potomac. His analysis of the dilemma is evocative, but his proposed solution is highly questionable, that is, that the faith of Catholicism is the only spiritual force capable of providing an alternative to the militant faith of Chinese communism.

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Jewish Nationality and Diaspora Nationalism: Reading Daniel Boyarin Through Louis Brandeis

Daniel Boyarin: The No-State Solution: A Jewish Manifesto . Yale University Press, 2023, 195 pp.

• Published: 18 May 2024

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Here Dubnow may be closer to Leo Pinsker (1821–1881) than we normally think. Pinsker’s Autoemancipation , written before Herzl’s The Jewish State , was not about a nation-state (and certainly not in Palestine) but a kind of “autonomism” where Jews could lead a national life within a multinational state. (See Shumsky 2018 )

Even earlier, the failed revolutions of 1848 mostly in Central Europe exposed how the supposed unification of nations were threatened by ethnic conflicts. This would rise to the level of all-out war half a century later.

^[See Halpern (1956): 24-69]. The “if” was essentially put to rest in George Washington’s ( 1790 ) letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, in which he wrote: “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Butler’s ( 2012 ) Parting Ways also makes an argument for Jewish cosmopolitanism (See my reading of Butler in Magid 2023b : 75–96).

I owe this last observation to my colleague and friend Tsiona Lida.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2006. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers . New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

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Boyarin, Daniel. 2018. Judaism: The genealogy of a modern notion . New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

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Brandeis, Louis D. 1915. The Jewish problem and how to solve it . New York: The Zionist Essays Publications Committee.

Brandeis, Louis D. 1942. The fruits of Zionism. In Brandeis on Zionism: A collection of addresses and statements by Louis D. Brandeis, 49–58. Washington, DC: The Zionist Organization of America.

Butler, Judith. 2012. Parting ways: Jewishness and the critique of Zionism . New York: Columbia University Press.

Cohen, Hermann. 1993. The Messianic idea. In Reason and hope , ed. Eva Jospe, 122–130. New Jersey: Behrman House.

Epstein, Jean Beth. 2003. The liberal social contract and the privatization of religion. In Religion as a public good , ed. A. Mittleman, 129–163. New York: Rowan and Littlefield.

Feld, Marjorie. 2024. The threshold of dissent: A history of American Jewish critics of Israel . New York: NYU Press.

Greggo, Leah. 2021 (January 8), Pittsburgh platform.  ReligYinz: Mapping religious Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh. https://religyinz.pitt.edu/pittsburgh-platform/

Levin, Geoffrey. 2023. Our Palestine question: Israel and American Jewish dissent 1948–1978 . New Haven: Yale University Press.

Magid, Shaul. 2023b. The necessity of exile: Essays from a distance . New York: Ayin Press.

Magid, Shaul. 2023a. The no-state solution: A conversation with Daniel Boyarin. Ayin Press, February 2, 2023. https://ayinpress.org/the-no-state-solution-a-conversation-with-daniel-boyarin/

Myers, David. 2009. Between Jew and Arab: The lost voice of Simon Rawidowicz . Waltham and Hanover: Brandeis University Press.

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Weiss, Daniel. 2022. Modern Jewish philosophy and the politics of divine violence . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Afrikaner Nationalism Essay For Students in English

Table of Contents

Introduction

Assuring and preserving Afrikaner interests was the primary objective of the National Party (NP) when it was elected to power in South Africa in 1948. After the 1961 Constitution, which stripped black South Africans of their voting rights, the National Party maintained its control over South Africa through outright Apartheid.

Hostility and violence were common during the Apartheid period. Anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa lobbied for international sanctions against the Afrikaner government following the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, which resulted in the deaths of 69 black protestors (South African History Online).

Apartheid was not adequately representing the interests of Afrikaners, according to many Afrikaners who questioned the NP’s commitment to maintaining it. South Africans refer to themselves as Afrikaners both ethnically and politically. Boers, which means ‘farmers,’ were also referred to as Afrikaners until the late 1950s.

Afrikaner Nationalism Essay Full Essay

Although they have different connotations, these terms are somewhat interchangeable. The National Party represented all South African interests prior to Apartheid as a party opposing British imperialism. Therefore, nationalists sought complete independence from Britain not just politically (White), but also economically (Autarky) and culturally (Davenport).

Afro-African, black, colored, and Indian were the four main ethnic groups in South Africa during this time period. At the time, the ruling class was made up of white people who spoke Afrikaans: they claimed blacks and coloreds were brought over for work involuntarily during settler-colonialism, so they did not have a history or culture. Therefore, Afrikaner nationalism served as a preservationist ideology (Davenport) for the white heritage.

South African History

Increasing participation of Indian people in government and politics indicates that Afrikaner nationalism is becoming more inclusive as Indians are recognized as South Africans.

During Apartheid, white South Africans spoke Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch. As an official language of South Africa, Afrikaner has become an increasingly common term to describe both an ethnic group and its language.

The Afrikaans language was developed by the poor white population as an alternative to the standard Dutch language. Afrikaans was not taught to black speakers during Apartheid, which resulted in it being renamed Afrikaner instead of Afrikaans.

The Het Volk party (Norden) was founded by D.F. Malan as a coalition among Afrikaner parties, such as the Afrikaner bond and Het Volk. The United Party (UP) was formed by J.B.M. Hertzog in 1939 after he broke away from his more liberal wing to form three consecutive NP governments from 1924 to 1939.

Black South Africans were lobbied successfully for more rights during this period by the opposition United Party, which eliminated racial segregation into separate spheres of influence known as Grand Apartheid, which meant whites could control what blacks did in their segregated neighborhoods (Norden).

National Party

South Africans were classified into racial groups based on their appearance and socio-economic status under the Population Registration Act enacted by the NP after defeating the United Party in 1994. In order to build a strong base of support for its political party, the NP joined forces with the Afrikanerbond and Het Volk.

It was founded in 1918 to address inferiority complexes created by British imperialism (Norden) among Afrikaners by “ruling and protecting” them. It was exclusively white people who joined the Afrikaner bond since they were only interested in shared interests: language, culture, and political independence from the British.

Afrikaans was officially recognized as one of the official languages of South Africa in 1925 by the Afrikaner bond, which established the Afrikaanse Taal-en Kultuurvereniging. Also, the NP began supporting cultural activities such as concerts and youth groups in order to bring Afrikaners under one banner (Hankins) and mobilize them into a cultural community.

There were factions within the National Party that were based on socioeconomic class differences, rather than being a monolithic body: some members recognized that they needed more grassroots support to win the 1948 elections.

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Afrikaner Nation

By promoting Christian nationalism to South Africans, the National Party encouraged citizens to respect rather than fear their differences, thus gaining votes from Afrikaners (Norden). The ideology could be considered racist since no equality was recognized between races; rather, it advocated controlling the region assigned to blacks without integrating them into other groups.

As a result of Apartheid, black and white residents were segregated politically and economically. Because whites could afford better housing, schools, and travel opportunities, segregation became an institutionalized socioeconomic system that favored rich whites (Norden).

By gaining the Afrikaner population vote in 1948, the National Party slowly came to power despite early opposition to Apartheid. They officially established Apartheid one year after winning the election, as a federal law allowing white South Africans to participate in political representation without the right to vote (Hankins).

In the 1950s, under Prime Minister Dr. NP, this harsh form of social control was implemented. By replacing English with Afrikaans in schools and government offices, Hendrik Verwoerd paved the way for the development of an Afrikaner culture where white people celebrated their differences rather than hid them (Norden).

A mandatory identification card was also issued by the NP to blacks at all times. Due to the lack of a valid permit, they were prohibited from leaving their designated region.

A system of social control was designed to control the black movement by white police officers, causing natives to be afraid of traveling into areas that were assigned to other races (Norden). As a result of Nelson Mandela’s refusal to submit to minority rule by whites, his ANC became involved in resistance movements against Apartheid.

Through the creation of bantustans, the nationalist movement maintained Africa’s poverty and prevented its emancipation. Despite living in a poor region of the country, southern Africa people had to pay taxes to the white government (Norden) because bantustans were lands specifically reserved for black citizens.

As part of the NP’s policies, blacks were also required to carry identity cards. In this way, police were able to monitor their movement and arrest them if they entered another race’s designated area. “Security forces” took control of townships where blacks protested unfair government treatment and were arrested or killed.

Besides being denied representation in Parliament, black citizens received significantly fewer educational and medical services than whites (Hankins). Nelson Mandela became the first president of a fully democratic South Africa in 1994 after the NP ruled apartheid-era South Africa from 1948 to 1994.

A majority of NP members were Afrikaners who believed that British imperialism had “ruined” their country after World War II due to British imperialism (Walsh). Also, the National Party used ‘Christian Nationalism’ to win Afrikaner people votes by claiming that God created the world’s races and must therefore be respected rather than feared (Norden).

Nevertheless, this ideology could be viewed as racist since it did not recognize equality between races; it merely argued that blacks should remain independent within their assigned regions rather than integrate with others. Due to the NP’s complete control over Parliament, black Citizens were not oblivious to apartheid’s unfairness but were powerless to address it.

As a result of British imperialism after the first world war, Afrikaners overwhelmingly supported the National Party. This party sought to create a separate culture where whites would have sole responsibility for government. Architect of apartheid Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd promoted intense segregation between blacks and whites during his Prime Ministership between 1948 and 1952.

The Nordics believed that differences should be embraced rather than feared because there are irreconcilable differences in which one group will always dominate. Although Hankins suggested black citizens remain in their bantustans rather than integrating with other cultures (Hankins), he failed to recognize these ‘irreconcilable’ groups as equals.

In addition to requiring blacks to carry identity cards, the NP passed laws to make them do so. The police were able to monitor their movements more easily as a result. If caught crossing into an area designated for another race, they were arrested.

Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first black president (Norden) on April 27th, 1994, marking the end of apartheid. In his speech after becoming president, Mandela explicitly stated that he had no intention of disparaging Afrikaners. He instead sought to enhance the positive aspects while reforming “the less desirable aspects of Afrikaner history” (Hendricks).

When it came to apartheid’s sins, he advocated Truth and Reconciliation rather than retribution, allowing all sides to discuss what happened without fear of punishment or retaliation.

Mandela, who helped create the new ANC government after losing the election, did not dissolve the NP but rather promoted reconciliation between Afrikaners and non-Afrikaners by bringing Afrikaner culture and traditions to the forefront of racial reconciliation.

Despite their ethnicities, South Africans were able to watch rugby games together because the sport became a unifying factor for the nation. The black Citizens who played sports watched television, and read newspapers without fear of persecution were Nelson Mandela’s hope for them (Norden).

Apartheid was abolished in 1948, but Afrikaners were not fully eliminated. While the interracial sport does not necessarily mean the NP is no longer ruling the country, it does bring hope for future South African generations to be able to reconcile with their past rather than live in fear.

South African blacks are less likely to perceive whites as oppressors because they are more involved in Afrikaner culture. Once Mandela is out of office, it will be easier to achieve peace between blacks and whites. Aiming to build better relationships between races is more important now than ever before, as Nelson Mandela will retire on June 16th, 1999.

Under Nelson Mandela’s administration, Afrikaners once again felt comfortable with their status in society because the white government was brought into the 21st century. President Jacob Zuma is almost certain to be reelected to South Africa’s top job in 2009 as the leader of the ANC (Norden).

Conclusion,

Since the NP had a plurality of power based on support from Afrikaner voters, they were able to retain control over Parliament until they lost their election; thus, whites were worried that voting for another party would lead to more power for blacks, which would lead to a loss of white privilege due to affirmative action programs if they voted for another party.

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Nationalism At Its Finest

Nationalism is still alive and well. After traveling to London and visiting the Imperial War Museum, I have noticed that everyone wants to be the hero of the WWII story. I have noticed some of the other students on the trip getting very excited about the success the United States brought to the Allies during the war. This is interesting to me because I had not heard them be patriotic until we stepped foot in the Imperial War Museum. Students have said things like “I’ve never felt so patriotic” and “they would have been nowhere without us.” I understand many of these comments are not to be taken too seriously, but I find it so interesting how nationalism rises when talking about war. I have not heard many students my age say they are proud to be an American while in America, for college students have strong opinions on what is going wrong in our country. This does not only stem from Americans, but I witnessed many people from other allied nations express nationalism.

The act of nationalism that was most surprising to me was the display of pride the Russians have for their contributions to the war. When we first arrived at the Imperial War Museum, there were Russians placing flowers at the foot of the memorial for the USSR soldiers since it was the anniversary of the end of WWII. This ceremony was being filmed. It was taken very seriously, for the area around it was silent. The people were even holding a USSR flag. It was a bit of an eerie sight because of the United States’ strong negative feelings towards Russia during and after the Cold War. I also overheard a schoolboy proclaim his patriotism towards the UK while in the museum. As I was looking at the Dunkirk display, the boy and his friends came up next to me. He pounded on his chest and proclaimed, “We saved them”. The boys then snickered and walked away. This statement was not directed at me, I just overheard this portion of the conversation. The boy looked to be a little younger than me, probably in high school. It was so cool to hear how people are excited to be a part of their country when they helped win such a devastating conflict. From the comments made by my peers, to the laying of flowers, to a schoolboy excited for his country to have been a part of the war, nationalism is still thriving in the context of war.

Above is a photo of the Russian citizens paying homage to the soldiers that died for their country. You can see the USSR flag in the middle of the small crowd.

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White Nationalism’s Most Famous Young Escapee Has A Warning

W hen R. Derek Black was a child, they were considered the heir to the white nationalist movement in America. Their father, Don, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, had created Stormfront, the legacy white supremacist website; Derek ran Stormfront’s corollary site for children, co-hosted a white nationalist radio show with their father, spoke at white nationalist conferences, and successfully won a Republican committee seat in Palm Beach County, Florida. Derek’s mother had been married to David Duke; Duke was Derek’s godfather.

But Derek’s life changed when they enrolled in New College of Florida. The Sarasota school is now known for its 2023 conservative political takeover by Christopher Rufo—a takeover Black lamented in a previous interview with Slate . But for most of its history, New College was a progressive haven. Black, while attending, lived a double life until they were outed on a studentwide email thread; what followed was a remarkable and successful student-led effort to convert Black, as documented in the 2018 book Rising Out of Hatred by the journalist Eli Saslow. In 2013, Black publicly renounced their former ideology and now speaks out publicly against it, while also pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Chicago researching proto-racism in early medieval intellectual history.

This singular life story is now the subject of Black’s memoir. The Klansman’s Son: My Journey From White Nationalism to Antiracism , which covers their childhood in the movement, their ideological transformation, the fallout, and their political awakening with the rise of Donald Trump, came out on Tuesday. Slate spoke with Black, who is transgender and now uses they/she pronouns, about their ideological journey, how they are thinking about student-led activism, the recent protest movement—and how they understand this moment in American politics, when the war in Gaza has realigned people on the left and the right. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Slate: How did you decide to write this book now, and why?

R. Derek Black: I thought about it for the first time shortly after the Trump election [in 2016]. About three years before that, I had written this public statement condemning my family, and I genuinely thought that would be the last time that I spoke publicly about anything. I was very happy that I had been able to find some kind of niche in academia in medieval history. And after wrestling with how much harm I had caused, I didn’t even understand how it could be an ethical choice to speak out publicly. But watching the Trump campaign, it started feeling sort of cowardly to not be speaking out, as opposed to a moral choice.

People asked me to write a book, and I chose not to. It didn’t feel right—I didn’t have enough context or distance from my family or the movement they built. And I didn’t understand how to think about the Trump movement in relation to white nationalism.

But after Biden won, I decided that this was the time. I had a strong sense that the far-right movement would likely surge, because that’s just historically how that works. And that’s what I would have been doing, had I been in the midst of it still; it just would have made sense as a strategy. With Jan. 6, once again, I had people interested in [a book]. Since January of 2021, I’ve been working on it.

How is your book different from the 2018 story of your conversion that’s told in Eli Saslow’s Rising Out of Hatred ?

When I first started writing this one, I wrote it as 13 essays about how people change their minds. My big understanding of my life is that our beliefs that are really core to us are the same thing as the community of people we care about. If we want to try to persuade somebody, the question is, then, w ho is the community of people they care about? How do they see themselves as being loyal and beholden to those people? Somebody changing their mind is changing the network of people that they feel responsible for.

I was trying to describe what it felt like to come into a community and have to change to maintain my sense of being a moral person in it. I’m trying to make an argument that my experience was fundamentally one of being grounded in different communities.

You come from a background that is both racist and deeply antisemitic. Do you have any insight into how that community is feeling about this moment where some on the right are accusing the anti-Zionist left of being antisemitic?

I remember, shortly after Oct. 7, I got texts from some of my siblings. They said, I bet now even your lefty friends are on our side . And what they meant by that was anti-Israel.

I have built these leftist circles who are adamantly protesting the Israeli government and coming up with this deep anti-colonialist discourse. And I feel deeply uneasy, because a large portion of my social circle is Jewish, and I’m seeing this kind of reaction that even in the best of times really does not seem to take seriously the discrimination and fear that Jewish people in America feel a lot of the time. I think there’s this idea among non-Jewish people on the left that I get incredibly frustrated with, that antisemitism is not an issue they need to be heavily worried about. They seem to take for granted that at least white-passing Jewish people aren’t facing fear or discrimination.

The way that I grew up makes it kind of impossible for me to think that antisemitism is not powerful, not just because my family was running an antisemitic movement, but because they were organizing and seeking out membership, and it was very easy . There was a wealth of people with much more low-key antisemitic views who were always ready to become a part of this movement. Antisemitism was the thread that really held [white nationalism] together as an ideology. Global racism and global segregation was, theoretically, the goal of white nationalism, but the more I look back on it, the more I recognize that the organizing principles that ties it together is antisemitism. And so it just feels incredibly naïve to dismiss how powerful antisemitism is in the modern world.

And I really get upset and angry because [organizers] are not taking into account antisemitic people on the far right coming in and infiltrating. I think that really advantages the antisemitic movement in the United States. Which, to be clear, is broad. If anyone is in a position where they’re organizing against the attack on Gaza, not giving a home to the antisemitic movement has to be just a fundamental priority of what you’re organizing.

I want to emphasize that I don’t see the protests as fundamentally antisemitic. But I am always very alarmed about the fact that antisemitism can easily attach itself to anything criticizing Israel.

On the other hand, there has been Islamophobia and at least one incident of overt anti-Black racism from counterprotesters. This is such a messy conflict, because you also have incidents where pro-Israel counterprotesters ally themselves with traditional fraternities , which have sometimes been overtly racist. It seems to me like this whole situation would delight white supremacists.

The power of the white nationalist movement is not that they have a ton of numbers. The reason they’ve been a powerful force in the United States and other countries since the 1950s as an organized movement is they tap into messages that exist in more latent ways in the rest of society. And they get involved in other, larger protest movements and are able to magnify their own message.

There is racism and antisemitism baked into so much of society that it appears even in the space where people are doing a liberatory protest. That is a perfect fertile ground; that’s exactly what white nationalists look for. And this is something that they’re really reveling in, the idea that criticism of Israel is so pervasive that they can take that and turn it into broader antisemitism.

Speaking of antisemitism being baked into society: Did you happen to see Marjorie Taylor Greene explained her vote against the “Antisemitism Awareness Act” by arguing it “could convict Christians of antisemitism” for believing Jews killed Jesus? This seems to be in step with the recent rhetorical movement on the far right to position antisemitism as being a basic element of Christianity.

I hadn’t heard the Marjorie Taylor Greene comment, but it feels like exactly the kind of thing that white nationalists want to emphasize: this sort of natural idea of antisemitism as being a part of Christianity. People ask a lot if white nationalists are Christians, and I want to emphasize that there are not a huge number of normal Christian people in white nationalism. It’s much more common for people to either be atheist, or be some sort of radical sect of Christianity, or to be some sort of religion they’ve created for themselves. A big part of that is because of how fundamental antisemitism is to them and how inherently morally complicated it is to be very antisemitic via traditional Christianity. On its face, Christianity is a problematic religion to be an antisemite within. It’s so fundamentally beholden to the Jewish tradition.

You use they/she pronouns. Can you share how your view of gender has evolved?

The only thing I think I regret about the book was around gender issues. It’s not a gender book, but I do feel bad there’s just a few little crumbs, because it’s become such a huge part of my life over the last few years. So I want to be more outspoken about it now. I do identify as trans. If anybody reads the book, know that you’re reading about the experience of somebody who along the way had complicated views of their own gender and fear of being outed.

Over the years, I just sort of forgot the difference between wanting something and not being able to do it. If I can’t do this, if it’s not safe to do it, then I must not want it. And in my late 20s and 30s, I reassessed and said, Well, maybe I can want something and assess whether it’s safe to do it. Understanding that has been a more recent part of my life.

Your story is a demonstration of how anyone can change. But do you think having your own struggles with gender identity made it so you could more easily exercise empathy than other white nationalists? Do you think your gender played a role?

I feel confident in saying that it is definitely not the explanation, because it was so hard to come to a place where I disagreed strongly and firmly and clearly with my family’s racism and antisemitism. And when I condemned it, there was no part of me that felt like I could come out with gender stuff, even though I had a lot of gender thoughts at that time. I didn’t feel like it was something that felt possible in any way, so it wasn’t something that was driving me.

But even if I didn’t think that I had any desire to ever live authentically, I still had the sense that  people have things about themselves they can’t change, and that to discriminate against them or to marginalize them is a very awful thing to do. … Maybe if you never have that feeling, it would become a lot harder to be open to individuals in the ways that ultimately undid my worldview.

To go back to the protests, gender seems to be playing a role in the politics of the backlash. Far-right commentators have noted how they seem to be led by women, and even made a point of arguing that the female protesters are ugly . Is that something you were familiar with in white nationalist politics?

I’m very familiar with that. Even when I was a kid, I remember arguing with white nationalists about this, like, just lay off. People have different aesthetic goals. White nationalists are not always conservative. They’re open to expansive social programs; they kind of want Medicare for all, but only for white people. But one thing that is very conservative is the idea that there are prescribed beauty and presentation roles. There are supposed to be ways that we all agree to be in the world, and if you break from them, you’re breaking the social contract. That kept me closeted, the idea that it doesn’t matter how you feel inside, what is important is we all are given these social prescriptions, and we all agree that to live in a society and feel safe and have enough resources and get along with each other, we all have to follow these rules about how we’re supposed to dress and what we’re supposed to be.

How seriously do you think people should be taking the white nationalist movement at this particular moment?

I think people should be taking it very, very seriously. And I know that that can sometimes feel a little alarmist, but there is always a potential for direct violence. And I don’t think there have been so many opportunities [for the movement] any time before in my lifetime. Most of my life, the American right has had lots of bulwarks against that kind of racism and antisemitism—and militant, anti-democratic strains. White nationalists want to overthrow this country and install some kind of new racial nationalist regime; I can’t think of any point in my lifetime when it felt like there were more figures within the mainstream Republican Party who were not willing to condemn that.

The thing that I’m most worried about, actually, is that there’s nothing really to stop us from having far-right politicians with a following, who also have private mercenary armies. That’s something that I don’t see Donald Trump doing, but I remember in 2020, I was living in D.C., and I was protesting in front of the White House most days. And he had called up all these security people from different divisions, the Bureau of Prisons and ICE and Border Patrol. In that chaotic moment, they didn’t have identification on them , they weren’t wearing uniforms, a lot of them were carrying weapons and standing around the White House, and they would spit on the ground and show how much distaste they had for us protesters. [Trump] tear-gassed the protesters so that he could go stand in front of the church; helicopters would come really low and sort of buzz the crowd . The fact that while he was willing to use that kind of force against people—It was then that it occurred to me that white nationalists have this vision of 1930s-style fascist politics with politicians with mercenaries that go and intimidate their enemies and people at the ballot boxes. And we’ve seen that a little bit, and there’s a real danger of it happening again in 2024. But there’s even more danger of it over time becoming a staple part of our country, where far-right politics embraces intimidation and violence and personal retribution. And I just don’t think I’ve seen any part of my lifetime where the United States felt more susceptible to that than now.

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Critic’s Notebook

‘Taking Venice’: The Strange Story of the U.S. Government and a Painter

The documentary offers a glimpse of how the arts were treated very differently in midcentury America.

By Alissa Wilkinson

Something about “Taking Venice,” Amei Wallach’s new documentary about the 1964 Venice Biennale (in theaters), feels almost like science fiction, or maybe fantasy. Imagine the U.S. government taking such a keen interest in the fine arts that there may or may not have been an attempt to rig a major international prize for an American artist. A painter, no less!

History buffs already know that during the Cold War, American intelligence agencies were heavily involved in literature, music and the fine arts, seeing them as a way to export soft power around the world and prove U.S. dominance over the Soviet Union. “Taking Venice” tells one slice of that story: a long-rumored conspiracy between the State Department and art dealers to ensure that the young painter Robert Rauschenberg would win the grand prize at the event sometimes called the “Olympics of art” — and a “fiesta of nationalism.”

So … did they conspire? “Taking Venice” does not exactly answer that question, though various people who were involved give their versions of the story. But that question is far from what makes the documentary so interesting. Instead, it’s a tale of Americans crashing what had been a European party in a moment when American optimism was at its height. Artists like Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, John Chamberlain and Jasper Johns were making work that exploded ideas about what a painting should be and do. As one expert notes, they dared to make art that suggested the present was important, not just the past.

And they had support from their government in ways that were weird and complicated. In a 1963 speech a month before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy declared , “I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.” Then again, as several people note, the freedom of expression that American art was supposed to illustrate on the world stage — often without the artists’ full realization of the government’s involvement — was subject to its own kind of censorship. Government entities like the House Un-American Activities Committee and intelligence agencies decided who was allowed to represent the country and whose voices were unwelcome.

Yet it’s still fascinating to imagine a time, not all that long ago, in which painting, sculpture, jazz, literature and more were considered keys to the exporting of American influence around the world. It’s a cultural attitude that’s shifted tremendously in the years since, at least on the broader scale, away from seeing art as embodying a culture’s hopes and dreams and toward something more crass.

But with this year’s edition of the Biennale underway, the question of what it means to be an American artist (or an artist from any country) is still one worth wrestling with, and something “Taking Venice” explores, too. “Art is not only about art,” Christine Macel, the curator of the 2017 Biennale, says at the start of the film. “It’s about power and politics. When you have the power, you show it through art.”

Bonus Review: ‘Film Geek’

Richard Shepard, the director of the black comedies “Dom Hemingway” and “The Matador,” is a lifelong cinephile with a voracious appetite for movies. “Film Geek” (in theaters), a feature-length video essay composed primarily of footage of films that he saw growing up in the 1970s in New York City, delves deep into his obsession. In a voice-over, he recounts his childhood, when he was “addicted to movies, to watching them, to making them.” He is enthusiastic, and the movie aspires to make that enthusiasm infectious. I appreciate Shepard’s affection: I also grew up loving movies, and I found his wistful reminiscences of being awed by “Jaws” and “Star Wars” relatable. But Shepard’s level of self-regard can be stultifying. For minutes at a time, he simply rattles off the titles of various movies that he saw as a child. “Film Geek” has been likened to Thom Andersen’s great documentary from 2003, “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” and on the level of montage, they share a superficial resemblance: Both are brisk and well edited. But “Los Angeles Plays Itself” is also a thoughtful and incisive work of film criticism, whereas Shepard describes movies in clichés. — CALUM MARSH

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

Inside the Venice Biennale

The 2024 venice biennale features work by more than 330 participating artists from some 90 countries scattered throughout the city..

A Case for Returning Looted Artifacts:  For years, activists and politicians have led discussions about whether disputed museum objects  should go back to their countries of origin. At this year’s Biennale, artists are entering the fray.

Raising a New Flag:  Dread Scott’s unabashedly activist art once led to a Supreme Court ruling on free speech. Now during the Biennale, he tackles racist immigration policies .

Balance on the U.S.-Mexico Border:  In a show this spring and summer between two museums on either side of the border , artists tell fresh stories about a contentious region.

Archie Moore Wins Top Prize:  The Indigenous Australian artist won the Golden Lion  for his installation, “kith and kin,” which draws on what he says is 65,000 years of family history.

A Work’s Context:  Rather than having a solo retrospective, Julie Mehretu chose  to have a show in Venice that includes works by her artist friends.