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1.2 theories of nationalism
1. THEORIES OF NATIONALISM
A.M. SALVA
FS DIP 112: Philippine Nationalism and Culture
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Nationalism.html
2. 5 Nationalist theorists
● Ernest Gellner,
● Miroslav Hroch,
● Eric Hobsbawm,
● Ernest Renan and
● Benedict Anderson.
These five theorists have contributed a tremendous
amount to the study of the rise of nationalism.
Gellner, Hroch and Hobsbawm propose general
models for the rise of nations, while Renan and
Anderson define nationality and examine the spirit
behind it.
3. Ernest Gellner
the most influential theorist in the study of
nationalism. five stages in the transition:
1. Baseline: "A world exists where
ethnicity is still not yet self-evidently
present, and where the idea of any link
between it and political legitimacy is
almost entirely absent."
4. Ernest Gellner
2. Nationalist Irredentism: "A world which
has inherited and retained most of its
political boundaries and structures from
the previous stage, but within which
ethnicity as a political principle—in other
words, nationalism—is beginning to
operate…The old borders and polities are
under pressure from nationalist agitation."
5. Ernest Gellner
3. Emergence of Nationalist States: "National
Irredentism triumphant and self-defeating. Plural
empires collapse, and with them the entire dynastic-
religious style of political legitimation, and it is
replaced by nationalism as the main effective
principle. A set of smaller states emerge, purporting
to fulfill the national destiny of the ethnic group with
which they are identified. This condition is self-
defeating, in so far as these new units are just as
minority-haunted as the larger ones which had
preceded them. The new units are haunted by all
the weaknesses of their precursors, plus some
additional ones of their own. "
6. Ernest Gellner
4. Nacht and Nebel. "This is a term employed by the
Nazis for some of their operations in the course of
the Second World War. Under cover of wartime
secrecy, or in the heat of conflict and passion, or
during the period of retaliatory indignation, moral
standards are suspended, and the principle of
nationalism, demanding compact homogenous
ethnic groups within given political-territorial units, is
implemented with a new ruthlessness. It is no longer
done by the older and benign method of
assimilation, but by mass murder or forcible
transplantation of populations."
7. Ernest Gellner
5. Cultural Convergence: "High level of
satiation of the nationalist requirement,
plus generalized affluence, plus cultural
convergence, leads to a diminution,
though not the disappearance, of the
virulence of nationalist revindication."
*Gellner grounds each stage historically. It is interesting to
note that he considers the world on eve of the French
Revolution in 1789 the "baseline" society, although it bears
very little resemblance to either one of the two societies
Gellner describes as "baseline." Prior to the French
Revolution, dynastic monarchies invoked the Divine Right of
Kings to apportion land and to govern the people.
8. Miroslav Hroch
● classifies a nation as "a large social group
integrated not by one but by a
combination of several kinds of objective
relationships (economic, political,
linguistic, cultural, religious, geographical,
historical) and their subjective reflection in
collective consciousness."
9. Miroslav Hroch
three keys to creating a "nation:"
1. "a 'memory' of a common past, treated as
a 'destiny' of the group;
2. a density of linguistic or cultural ties
enabling a higher degree of social
communication within the group or beyond it;
3. a conception of the equality of all
members of the group organized as a civil
society."
*three keys to creating a national identity generally occur in
Phase A:
10. Miroslav Hroch
● Phase A: Activists strive to lay the
foundation for a national identity. They
research the cultural, linguistic, social and
sometimes historical attributes of a non-
dominant group in order to raise
awareness of the common traits—but they
do this "without pressing specifically
national demands to remedy deficits."
11. Miroslav Hroch
● Phase B: "A new range of activists
emerged, who sought to win over as many
of their ethnic group as possible to the
project of creating a future nation."
● Phase C: The majority of the population
forms a mass movement. "In this phase, a
full social movement comes into being and
movement branches into conservative-
clerical, liberal and democratic wings,
each with its own program."
12. Eric Hobsbawm
● incorporates Hroch's three phases into his
model for the development of nations and
adds to them:
National Consciousness: Hobsbawm's first
stage describes how "national
consciousness" develops "unevenly
among the social groupings and regions of
a country…the popular masses—workers,
servants, peasants—are the last to be
affected by it" (Nations and Nationalism
12).
13. Eric Hobsbawm
Phase A: Hobsbawm adopts Hroch's
terminology, describing Phase A as the
emergence of cultural, literary and folkloric
identity for a particular social group or
region (12). Within this phase, Hobsbawm
cites three criteria for making claims of
nationality:
14. Eric Hobsbawm
Hobsbawm cites three criteria:
1."Its historic association with a current
state or one with a fairly lengthy and
recent past"
2."The existence of a long-established
cultural elite, possessing a written national
literary and administrative vernacular"
3."A proven capacity for conquest"
15. Eric Hobsbawm
Phase B/ Popular Proto-Nationalism: A body
emerges, which consists of pioneers and
militants of "the national idea." They begin to
campaign for this idea of "nationality" (12). He
gives four main criteria for the development of
"popular proto-nationalism":
● 1. Language
● 2. Ethnicity
● 3. Religion
● 4. "The consciousness of belonging or having
belonged to a lasting political entity—the most
decisive criterion of proto-nationalism"
16. Eric Hobsbawm
Phase C: "Nationalist programmes acquire
mass support, or at least some of the the
mass support that nationalists always
claim they represent"
17. Eric Hobsbawm
1. "The transformation of nationalism"
(1870-1918): In this period, the world
witnessed the completion of German and
Italian unifications during the
"Mazzinian phase" (1870-1880), as well as
the collapse of multinational empires
(the Hapsburg empire, the Ottoman
empire, Russia) from 1880-1918 (101-
130)
18. Eric Hobsbawm
2. "The apogee of nationalism" (1918-
1950): he describes this period as the
triumph of the nineteenth century
"principle of nationality" .
3. Nationalism in the late twentieth
century: the rise of "internationalism" .
19. Ernest Renan
"a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.
Two things constitute this soul or spiritual
principle:
● One is the possession in common of a rich
legacy of memories;
● the other is a present-day consent, the
desire to live together, the will to
perpetuate the value of the heritage that
one has received in an undivided form".
20. Ernest Renan
Sacrifices form the foundation of
"nations"—"a nation is therefore a large-
scale solidarity, constituted by the feeling
of the sacrifices that one has made in the
past and of those that one is prepared to
make in the future".
21. Ernest Renan
● disregards conventional proposals that
race, religion and language generate
nationalism. However, he does cite
geography as a significant factor.
● also emphasized, most nations began as
dynasties. According to Renan, dynastic
territories progress to nations in one of
three ways: dynastic unions, general
popular consciousness and direct will of
provinces
22. Benedict Anderson
● proposed that nationalism filled the void left by
the decline of religious and dynastic territorial
control. He writes, "Through the general
principle of verticality, dynastic marriages
brought together diverse populations under new
apices" .
● The power of dynastic unions emerged most
clearly through the Hapsburg family. Monarchs
invoked the Divine Right of Kings to manipulate
their subjects (as opposed to their citizens), and
the Hapsburg family embodies that potent
combination of religion and a monarchy.
23. Benedict Anderson
● Monarchs invoked the Divine Right of Kings to
manipulate their subjects (as opposed to their
citizens), and the Hapsburg family embodies that
potent combination of religion and a monarchy.
In 1452, the Archduke of Austria (a Hapsburg)
was elected Holy Roman Emperor, marking the
beginning of a dynastic superpower that would
endure until the First World War. However, as
the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment
approached, such blind faith in the monarchy
diminished, and people began to consider the
concept of becoming a "nation."
24. Benedict Anderson
● The First World War saw the demise of
many dynastic realms—"by 1922,
Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns, Romanovs
and Ottomans were gone…From this time
on, the legitimate international norm was
the nation-state, so that in the League [of
Nations] even the surviving imperial
powers came dressed in national costume
rather than imperial uniform" (Imagined
Communities).
25. Timeline of the Major Events in
the History of Nations
● 1450- Invention of the printing press
(Gutenberg)
● 1452- The Archduke of Austria selected
as Holy Roman Emperor, marking the
beginning of the Hapsburg Dynasty (1452-
1918)
● 1492- The Unification of Spain
● 1618-1648- The Thirty Years' War
● 1648- Peace of Westphalia
● 1702-1713- War of Spanish Succession
26. Timeline of the Major Events in
the History of Nations
● 1713-1714- Treaties of Utrecht and
Rastadt
● 1776-1783- The War for American
Independence
● 1789- French Revolution
● 1792-1815- Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars
● 1815- Congress of Vienna
27. Timeline of the Major Events in
the History of Nations
● 1848- Revolutions of 1848
● 1859- The Italian War
● 1864- The Danish War
● 1866- The Austro-Prussian War
● 1870- The Franco-Prussian War
● 1871- Italian and German Unification
completed
28. Timeline of the Major Events in
the History of Nations
● 1914-1918- World War I
● 1917- Russian Revolution
● 1919- Treaty of Versailles
● 1933-1945- Germany's Third Reich: Hitler
comes to power
● 1938- Munich crisis; Germany annexes
Austria
● 1939-1945- Second World War
29. Timeline of the Major Events in
the History of Nations
● 1945- United Nations established (51 members);
Cold War begins
● 1947- India and Pakistan independent
● 1948- Burma independent, Israel established
● 1949- People's Republic of China established;
Dutch leave Indonesia
● 1950s- Japan regains sovereignty; various
African independence movements
● 1960s- More African independence movements;
Vietnam War begins