Nationalism is a term that refers to a doctrine[1] or political movement[2] that holds that a nation—usually defined in terms of ethnicity or culture—has the right to constitute an independent or autonomous political community based on a shared history and common destiny.[3] Most nationalists believe the borders of the state should be congruent with the borders of the nation.[4] Extreme forms of nationalism, such as those propagated by fascist movements in the twentieth century, hold that nationality is the most important aspect of one's identity and attempt to define the nation in terms of race or genetics.
Nationalism has had an enormous influence on world history. In modern times, the nation-state has become the dominant form of societal organization. Historians use the term nationalism to refer to this historical transition and to the emergence and predominance of nationalist ideology.
This section sets out the components of nationalist ideology as seen by nationalists themselves. (Academic theories of nationalism are skeptical of some of these beliefs and principles, see below).
Nationalism is a form of universalism when it makes universal claims about how the world should be organized, but it is particularistic with regard to individual nations. The combination of both is characteristic for the ideology, for instance in these assertions:
"in a nation-state, the language of the nation should be the official language, and all citizens should speak it, and not a foreign language."
"the official language of Denmark should be Danish, and all Danish citizens should speak it."
The universalistic principles bring nationalism into conflict with competing forms of universalism, the particularistic principles bring specific nationalist movements into conflict with rival nationalisms - for instance, the Danish-German tensions over their reciprocal linguistic minorities.
The starting point of nationalism is the existence of nations, which it takes as a given. Nations are typically seen as entities with a long history: most nationalists do not believe a nation can be created artificially. Nationalist movements see themselves as the representative of an existing, centuries-old nation. However, some theories of nationalism imply the reverse order - that the nationalist movements created the sense of national identity, and then a political unit corresponding to it, or that an existing state promoted a 'national' identity for itself.
Nationalists define individual nations on the basis of certain criteria, which distinguish one nation from another; and determine who is a member of each nation. These criteria typically include a shared language, culture, and/or shared values which are predominantly represented within a specific ethnic group. National identity refers both to these defining criteria, and to the shared heritage of each group. Membership in a nation is usually involuntary and determined by birth. Individual nationalisms vary in their degree of internal uniformity: some are monolithic, and tolerate little variance from the national norms. Academic nationalism theory emphasizes that national identity is contested, reflecting differences in region, class, gender, and language or dialect. A recent development is the idea of a national core culture, in Germany the Leitkultur, which emphasizes a minimal set of non-negotiable values: this is primarily a strategy of cultural assimilation in response to immigration.
Nationalism has the strong territorial component, with an inclusive categorisation of territory corresponding to the categorisation of individuals. For each nation, there is a territory which is uniquely associated with it, the national homeland, and together they account for most habitable land. This is reflected in the geopolitical claims of nationalism, which seeks to order the world as a series of nation-states, each based on the national homeland of its respective nation. Territorial claims characterise the politics of nationalist movements. Established nation-states also make an implicit territorial claim, to secure their own continued existence: sometimes it is specified in the national constitution. In the nationalist view, each nation has a moral entitlement to a sovereign state: this is usually taken as a given.
The nation-state is intended to guarantee the existence of a nation, to preserve its distinct identity, and to provide a territory where the national culture and ethos are dominant - nationalism is also a philosophy of the state. It sees a nation-state as a necessity for each nation: secessionist national movements often complain about their second-class status as a minority within another nation. This specific view of the duties of the state influenced the introduction of national education systems, often teaching a standard curriculum, national cultural policy, and national language policy. In turn, nation-states appeal to a national cultural-historical mythos to justify their existence, and to confer political legitimacy - acquiescence of the population in the authority of the government.
Nationalists recognise that 'non-national' states exist and existed, but do not see them as a legitimate form of state. The struggles of early nationalist movements were often directed against such non-national states, specifically multi-ethnic empires such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Most multi-ethnic empires have disappeared, but some secessionist movements see Russia and China as comparable non-national, imperial states. At least one modern state is clearly not a nation-state: the Vatican City exists solely to provide a sovereign territorial unit for the Roman Catholic Church.
Some critics have maintained that (unlike modern nationalism, which is a creation of the 19th century nation state) authentic nationalism (as the Latin 'natio' would suggest) must be based in some form of genophilia and the sharing of ancestors.
Nationalism as ideology includes ethical principles: that the moral duties of individuals to fellow members of the nation override those to non-members. Nationalism claims that national loyalty, in case of conflict, overrides local loyalties, and all other loyalties to family, friends, profession, religion, or class.
Theory
Background and problems
Specific examples of nationalism are extremely diverse. The theory of nationalism has always been complicated by this background, and by the intrusion of nationalist ideology into the theory. There are also national differences in the theory of nationalism, since people define nationalism on the basis of their local experience. Theory (and media coverage) may overemphasise conflicting nationalist movements, and war - diverting attention from general theoretical issues; for instance, the characteristics of nation-states.
Nationalist movements are surrounded by other nationalist movements and nations, and this may colour their version of nationalism. It may focus purely on self-determination, and ignore other nations. When conflicts arise, however, ideological attacks upon the identity and legitimacy of the 'enemy' nationalism may become the focus. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, both sides have claimed that the other is not a 'real' nation, and therefore has no right to a state. Jingoism and chauvinism make exaggerated claims about the superiority of one nation over another. National stereotypes are also common, and are usually insulting. This kind of negative nationalism, directed at other nations, is certainly a nationalist phenomenon, but not a sufficient basis for a general theory of nationalism.
Issues
The first studies of nationalism were generally historical accounts of nationalist movements. At the end of the 19th century, Marxists and other socialists produced political analyses that were critical of the nationalist movements then active in central and eastern Europe. Most sociological theories of nationalism date from after the Second World War. Some nationalism theory is about issues which concern nationalists themselves, such as who belongs to the nation and who does not, as well as the precise meaning of 'belonging'.
Origins
Recent general theory has looked at underlying issues, and above all the question of which came first, nations or nationalism. Nationalist activists see themselves as representing a pre-existing nation, and the primordialist theory of nationalism agrees. It sees nations, or at least ethnic groups, as a social reality dating back twenty thousand years.
The modernist theories imply that until around 1800, almost no-one had more than local loyalties. National identity and unity were originally imposed from above, by European states, because they were necessary to modernise economy and society. In this theory, nationalist conflicts are an unintended side-effect. For example, Ernest Gellner argued that nations are a by-product of industrialization. Modernisation theorists see such things as the printing press and capitalism as necessary conditions for nationalism.[5]
Anthony D. Smith, typically following the Hegellian dialectic of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, proposed a synthesis of primordialist and modernist views, now commonly referred to as an ethno-symbolist approach. According to Smith, the preconditions for the formation of a nation are as follows:
A fixed homeland (current or historical)
High autonomy
Hostile surroundings
Memories of battles
Sacred centres
Languages and scripts
Special customs
Historical records and thinking
Those preconditions may create powerful common mythology. Therefore, the mythic homeland is in reality more important for the national identity than the actual territory occupied by the nation.[6] Smith also posits that nations are formed through the inclusion of the whole populace (not just elites), constitution of legal and political institutions, nationalist ideology, international recognition and drawing up of borders.
Theoretical literature
There is a large amount of theoretical and empirical literature on nationalism. The following is a minimal selection, and a series of capsule summaries that do not do justice to the range of views expressed.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. 2nd ed. London: Verso. Anderson argues that nations are imagined political communities, and are imagined to be limited and sovereign. Their development is related to the decline of other types of imagined community, especially in the face of capitalist production of print media.
. 1982. Nations Before Nationalism. Armstrong traces the development of national identities from origins in antiquity and the medieval world.
. 1992. Nationalism and the State. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press. This approach focuses on the politics of nationalism, in particular on nationalism as a response to the imperatives of the modern state. It employs the mode of comparative history to study numerous cases of nationalism.
Canovan, Margaret. 1996. Nationhood and Political Theory. London: Edward Elgar. Canovan argues that questions of nationhood should be at the heart of the discipline of political theory.
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. This work links nationalism to the homogenising imperatives of industrial society and the reactions of minority cultures to those imperatives.
Greenfeld, Liah. 1992. Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Greenfeld argues that nationalism existed at an earlier age than previously thought: as early as the sixteenth century in the case of England.
. 1975. Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hechter attributes nationalism in the "Celtic fringe" of Britain and Ireland to the reinforcing divisions of culture and the division of labour.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Ranger, Terence, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This collection of essays, especially Hobsbawm's introduction and chapter on turn-of-the-century Europe, argues that the nation is a prominent type of invented tradition.
Kedourie, Elie. 1960. Nationalism. London: Hutchinson. Kedourie focuses on the role of disaffected German intellectuals in developing the doctrine of nationalism at the beginning of the nineteenth century from Kant's idea of the autonomy of the will and Herder's belief in the primacy of linguistic communities in establishing modes of thought.
Kedourie, Elie, ed. 1971. Nationalism in Asia and Africa. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Kedourie's introduction to this volume of nationalist texts extends his analysis in his earlier work to the efforts of intellectuals in colonial states.
Nairn, Tom. 1977. The Break-up of Britain. London: New Left Books. Marxist historian Nairn traces nationalism to the confrontation of colonialism, which leaves indigenous elites without recourse to any resources but their own population.
Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith traces modern nations and nationalism to pre-modern ethnic sources, arguing for the existence of an "ethnic core" in modern nations.
, 1993, "Comparing the decline of nationalisms in Western Europe: The Generational Dynamic" in International Social Science Journal
Nationalism may manifest itself as part of official state ideology or as a popular (non-state) movement and may be expressed along civic, ethnic, cultural, religious or ideological lines. These self-definitions of the nation are used to classify types of nationalism. However, such categories are not mutually exclusive and many nationalist movements combine some or all of these elements to varying degrees. Nationalist movements can also be classified by other criteria, such as scale and location.
Some political theorists make the case that any distinction between forms of nationalism is false. In all forms of nationalism, the populations believe that they share some kind of common culture, and culture can never be wholly separated from ethnicity. The United States, for example, has "God" on its coinage and in its Pledge of Allegiance, and designates official holidays which are seen by some to promote cultural biases. The United States has an ethnic theory of being American (nativism), and, for a short period in the 20th century, had a committee to investigate Un-American Activities.
Civic nationalism
Civic nationalism (or civil nationalism) is the form of nationalism in which the state derives political legitimacy from the active participation of its citizenry, from the degree to which it represents the "will of the people". It is often seen as originating with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and especially the social contract theories which take their name from his 1762 book The Social Contract. Civic nationalism lies within the traditions of rationalism and liberalism, but as a form of nationalism it is contrasted with ethnic nationalism. Membership of the civic nation is considered voluntary. Civic-national ideals influenced the development of representative democracy in countries such as the United States and France.
Ethnic nationalism
strengthening national unity, including campaigns for national salvation in times of crisis.
Catalan independentist mural in Republican district in Belfast
Nationalist parties and nationalist politicians, in this sense, usually place great emphasis on national symbols, such as the national flag.
The term 'nationalism' is also used by extension, or as a metaphor, to describe movements which promote a group identity of some kind. This use is especially common in the United States, and includes black nationalism and white nationalism in a cultural sense. They may overlap with nationalism in the classic sense, including black secessionist movements and pan-Africanism.
Nationalists obviously have a positive attitude toward their own nation, although this is not a definition of nationalism. The emotional appeal of nationalism is visible even in established and stable nation-states. The social psychology of nations includes national identity (the individual’s sense of belonging to a group), and national pride (self-association with the success of the group). National pride is related to the cultural influence of the nation, and its economic and political strength - although they may be exaggerated. However, the most important factor is that the emotions are shared: nationalism in sport includes the shared disappointment if the national team loses.
The emotions can be purely negative: a shared sense of threat can unify the nation. However, dramatic events, such as defeat in war, can qualitatively affect national identity and attitudes to non-national groups. The defeat of Germany in World War I, and the perceived humiliation by the Treaty of Versailles, economic crisis and hyperinflation, created a climate for xenophobia, revanchism, and the rise of Nazism. The solid bourgeois patriotism of the pre-1914 years, with the Kaiser as national father-figure, was no longer relevant.
Extremism
Although nationalism influences many aspects of life in stable nation-states, its presence is often invisible, since the nation-state is taken for granted. Michael Billig speaks of banal nationalism, the everyday, less visible forms of nationalism, which shape the minds of a nation's inhabitants on a day-to-day basis. Attention concentrates on extreme aspects, and on nationalism in unstable regions. Nationalism may be used as a derogatory label for political parties, or they may use it themselves as a euphemism for xenophobia, even if their policies are no more specifically nationalist, than other political parties in the same country. In Europe, some 'nationalist' anti-immigrant parties have a large electorate, and are represented in parliament. Smaller but highly visible groups also self-identify as 'nationalist', although it may be a euphemism for neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Activists in other countries are often referred to as ultra-nationalists, with a clearly pejorative meaning. See also chauvinism and jingoism.
Nationalism is a component of other political ideologies, and in its extreme form, fascism. However, it is not accurate to simply describe fascism as a more extreme form of nationalism. Nor is it generally correct to describe non-extreme nationalism as a lesser form of fascism. Fascism in the general sense, and the Italian original, were marked by a strong combination of ethnic nationalism and state nationalism like the British National Party, often combined with a form of economic and ethical socialism. That was certainly evident in Nazism. However, the geopolitical aspirations of Adolf Hitler are probably better described as imperialist and, to a lesser degree, colonialist because Nazi Germany ultimately ruled over vast areas where there was no historic German presence (imperialism) with intentions to eventually populate many of the conquered territories with ethnic Germans (colonialism). The Nazi state was so different from the typical European nation-state, that it was sui generis (requires a category of its own).
Nationalism does not necessarily imply a belief in the superiority of one nation over others, but in practice some (but not all) nationalists do think that way about their own nation. Occasionally they believe another nation can serve as an example for their own nation, see Anglophilia. There is a specific racial nationalism which can be considered an ethnic nationalism, but sometimes a form of racism can be found within almost all nationalist movements. It is usually directed at neighbouring nations and ethnic groups.
Racism was also a feature of colonialist ideologies, which were especially strong at the end of the 19th century. Strictly speaking, overseas colonies conflict with the principles of the nation-state, since they are not part of the historic homeland of the nation, and their inhabitants clearly do not belong to the same ethnic group, speak its language, or share its culture. In practice, nationalists sometimes combined a belief in self-determination in Europe, with colonisation in Africa or Asia.
Explicit biological race theory was influential from the end of the 19th century. Nationalist and fascist movements in the first half of the 20th century often appealed to these theories. The Nazi ideology was probably the most comprehensively racial ideology in history, and race influenced all aspects of policy in Nazi Germany.
Nevertheless racism continues to be an influence on nationalism. Ethnic cleansing is often seen as both a nationalist and racist phenomenon. It is part of nationalist logic that the state is reserved for one nation, but not all nation-states expel their minorities. The best known recent examples of ethnic cleansing are those during the Yugoslav secession war in the 1990s, although larger numbers may have been displaced in the African Great Lakes refugee crisis. Major ethnic cleansing took place during and after the Second World War, such as the Generalplan Ost and the removal of Germans from the Volga Republic during the 1950s.
Opposition and critique
Nationalism is sometimes an extremely assertive ideology, making far-reaching demands, including the disappearance of entire states. It has attracted vehement opposition. Much of the early opposition to nationalism was related to its geopolitical ideal of a separate state for every nation. The classic nationalist movements of the 19th century rejected the very existence of the multi-ethnic empires in Europe. This resulted in severe repression by the (generally autocratic) governments of those empires. That tradition of secessionism, repression, and violence continues, although by now a large nation typically confronts a smaller nation. Even in that early stage, however, there was an ideological critique of nationalism. That has developed into several forms of anti-nationalism in the western world. The Islamic revival of the 20th century also produced an Islamic critique of the nation-state.
In the liberal political tradition there is widespread criticism of ‘nationalism’ as a dangerous force and a cause of conflict and war between nation-states. Liberals do not generally dispute the existence of the nation-states. The liberal critique also emphasises individual freedom as opposed to national identity, which is by definition collective (see collectivism).
The pacifist critique of nationalism also concentrates on the violence of nationalist movements, the associated militarism, and on conflicts between nations inspired by jingoism or chauvinism. National symbols and patriotic assertiveness are in some countries discredited by their historical link with past wars, especially in Germany. Famous pacifist Bertrand Russell criticizes nationalism of diminishing individual's capacity to judge his or hers fatherland's foreign policy[17]. Likewise George Orwell, though not a pacifist himself, has stated that "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." [18]William Blum has said this in other words: "If love is blind, patriotism has lost all five sense"[19]
The anti-racist critique of nationalism concentrates on the attitudes to other nations, and especially on the doctrine that the nation-state exists for one national group, to the exclusion of others. It emphasises the chauvinism and xenophobia of many nationalisms.
Political movements of the left have often been suspicious of nationalism, again without necessarily seeking the disappearance of the existing nation-states. Marxism has been ambiguous towards the nation-state, and in the late 19th century some Marxist theorists rejected it completely. For some Marxists the world revolution implied a global state (or global absence of state); for others it meant that each nation-state had its own revolution. A significant event in this context was the failure of the social-democratic and socialist movements in Europe to mobilise a cross-border workers' opposition to World War I. At present most, but certainly not all, left-wing groups accept the nation-state, and see it as the political arena for their activities.
In the Western world the most comprehensive current ideological alternative to nationalism is cosmopolitanism. Ethical cosmopolitanism rejects one of the basic ethical principles of nationalism: that humans owe more duties to a fellow member of the nation, than to a non-member. It rejects such important nationalist values as national identity and national loyalty. However, there is also a political cosmopolitanism, which has a geopolitical programme to match that of nationalism: it seeks some form of world state, with a world government. Very few people openly and explicitly support the establishment of a global state, but political cosmopolitanism has influenced the development of international criminal law, and the erosion of the status of national sovereignty. In turn, nationalists are deeply suspicious of cosmopolitan attitudes, which they equate with eradication of diverse national cultures.
While internationalism in the cosmopolitanist context by definition implies cooperation among nations, and therefore the existence of nations, proletarian internationalism is different, in that it calls for the international working class to follow its brethren in other countries irrespective of the activities or pressures of the national government of a particular sector of that class. Meanwhile, anarchism rejects nation-states on the basis of self-determination of the majority social class, and thus reject nationalism. Instead of nations, anarchists usually advocate the creation of cooperative societies based on free association and mutual aid without regard to ethnicity or race.
This entry is related to, but not included in the Political ideologies series or one of its sub-series. Other related articles can be found at the Politics Portal.
^ "Nationalism I would define as an ideology claiming that a given human population has a natural solidarity based on shared history and a common destiny. This collective identity as a historically constituted people crucially entails the right to constitute an independent or autonomous political community. The idea of nationalism takes form historically in tandem with the doctrine of popular sovereignty: that the ultimate source of authority lies in the people, not the ruler or government. The foregoing definition of nationalism will be found in any classic text with minor variations." M. Crawford Young, 2004. Revisiting nationalism and ethnicity in Africa. UCLA International Institute, James S. Coleman Memorial Lecture Series. Or: Handler, Richard. "Nationalism is an ideology about individuated being. It is an ideology concerned with boundedness, continuity, and homogeneity encompassing diversity. It is an ideology in which social reality, conceived in terms of nationhood, is endowed with the reality of natural things." Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. New Directions in Anthropological Writing: History, Poetics, Cultural Criticism, ed. George E.; Clifford Marcus, James. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Passage online at [1]. Specifically on the issue: M. Freeden, 1998. Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology? Political Studies, Volume 46, Number 4, September 1998, pp. 748-765(18).
^ Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
^ Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities, p. 6. .
^ Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations London: Basil Blackwell. pp 6–18. .
^ Chatterjee, Partha. "Nationist Thought and the Colonial World," University of Minnesota Press,
^ Yael Tamir. 1993. Liberal Nationalism. Princeton University Press. ; Will Kymlicka. 1995. Multicultural Citizenship. Oxford University Press. ; David Miller. 1995. On Nationality. Oxford University Press. .
^ "The only type of nationalism that is allowed in Turkey is a homogenic, monocultured Turkish nationalism, which is also known as the Ataturk Nationalism.". Tarik Ziya Ekinci, paper for the EU-Turkey Civic Commission. [www.eutcc.org/articles/8/20/document223.ehtml]; Faruk Birtek, 2003. From Affiliation to Affinity: The 'Costs' to the 'Private' in the Reconstitution of 'Citizenship' in the Transition from a Multi-Ethnic Empire to the Nation-State - An Essentialist Investigation of the 19th century Ottoman Case.[2]
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