12.4 Nationalism

Origins of Nationalism

Nationalism is the idea that a people who share a common identity (language, culture, history, territory) should govern themselves as a sovereign nation. Before nationalism took hold, most people's primary loyalty was to a local lord, a king, or a religious institution rather than to a "nation" as we understand it today.

This ideology reshaped the political map of the modern world. It drove revolutions, built new countries, tore apart empires, and fueled some of history's worst conflicts. To understand modern geopolitics, you need to understand where nationalism came from and how it evolved.

Roots in Enlightenment Thought

Enlightenment philosophers in the 17th and 18th centuries laid the intellectual groundwork for nationalism, even though they weren't nationalists themselves. Their key contributions:

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that legitimate government rests on the "general will" of the people. This idea that sovereignty belongs to the people, not a monarch, became central to nationalist thinking.
• John Locke's social contract theory proposed that governments derive authority from the consent of the governed. This reframed citizenship as a relationship between individuals and their political community.
• The broader Enlightenment emphasis on reason, progress, and individual rights fueled demands for self-governance. If people are rational agents with natural rights, why should foreign rulers or distant monarchs control them?

French Revolution's Influence

The French Revolution (1789) turned Enlightenment theory into political reality and became the single most important catalyst for European nationalism.

• The revolutionary motto "liberté, égalité, fraternité" (liberty, equality, brotherhood) recast the nation as a community of equal citizens rather than subjects of a king.
• The creation of the National Assembly symbolized the transfer of sovereignty from the monarch to the people.
• Revolutionary France introduced conscription, creating "citizen armies." Soldiers now fought for their nation, not for a king's personal ambitions. This fostered a deep sense of national duty.
• As French armies swept across Europe, they spread nationalist ideals to other populations, who then began demanding their own national self-determination.

Romantic Movement's Impact

While the Enlightenment provided the political logic for nationalism, Romanticism gave it emotional power. Starting in the late 18th century, Romantic thinkers pushed back against pure rationalism and celebrated feeling, tradition, and cultural uniqueness.

• Johann Gottfried Herder promoted the concept of Volksgeist ("spirit of the people"), arguing that each nation has a unique cultural soul expressed through its language, folklore, and customs.
• Romantic artists and writers collected folk tales, composed music based on traditional melodies, and celebrated national mythologies. These cultural projects gave people a shared story to rally around.
• The emphasis on vernacular languages was especially important. Writing literature in local languages (rather than Latin or French) helped define distinct national communities and strengthened the sense that "we are a people."

Key Elements of Nationalism

Nationalism isn't just a feeling of patriotism. It's built from several interconnected components that together create a sense of national belonging.

National Identity Formation

National identity is the shared sense that "we are one people." It doesn't emerge naturally; it's actively constructed.

• Nations promote founding myths, national heroes, and origin stories that give citizens a common narrative. Think of how the American Revolution or the French Resistance function as shared reference points.
• Education systems play a huge role. Schools teach national history, celebrate national holidays, and instill a sense of civic belonging from childhood.
• National identity is often defined partly by contrast: who we are not. This "us vs. them" dynamic can build solidarity, but it can also breed hostility toward outsiders.

Shared Culture and Traditions

Common customs and practices bind members of a nation together in everyday life.

• Shared holidays and commemorations (like Independence Day or Bastille Day) reinforce collective memory.
• Culinary traditions, artistic expressions, music, and dance all serve as cultural markers that distinguish one nation from another.

Common Language Importance

A shared language is one of the most powerful tools of national cohesion. It allows people to communicate, consume the same media, and participate in a common literary tradition.

• Language standardization often accompanies nation-building. Governments promote one official language through schools, government documents, and media.
• This process has a darker side: language policies sometimes suppress regional dialects or minority languages, pressuring smaller groups to assimilate.

Territorial Claims

Nations almost always assert a connection to a specific territory, a "homeland" or "motherland."

• This emotional tie between people and land is powerful. National landscapes and natural features become symbols of identity (Mount Fuji for Japan, the Rhine for Germany).
• Competing territorial claims lead to border disputes and irredentist movements (efforts to reclaim territory seen as historically belonging to one's nation).

Types of Nationalism

Nationalism isn't one-size-fits-all. It takes different forms depending on how "the nation" is defined and what political values accompany it.

Civic vs. Ethnic Nationalism

This is one of the most important distinctions in the study of nationalism.

• Civic nationalism bases national belonging on shared citizenship, political values, and institutions. Anyone who embraces the nation's civic principles can belong, regardless of ethnicity. The French and American models are classic examples: in theory, becoming French or American is about adopting shared political ideals.
• Ethnic nationalism defines the nation through common ancestry, ethnicity, language, and cultural heritage. Belonging is determined by who you are, not what you believe. German völkisch nationalism and Japanese ethnic nationalism are historical examples. This form tends to be more exclusionary and can lead to discrimination against minorities who don't share the dominant ethnicity.

Liberal vs. Conservative Nationalism

• Liberal nationalism combines national self-determination with principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, and civil rights. The Italian Risorgimento (the 19th-century movement to unify Italy) is a key example: nationalists fought both for a unified Italian state and for representative government.
• Conservative nationalism emphasizes tradition, social order, and national greatness, often prioritizing the state's interests over individual rights. It tends toward strong centralized authority and sometimes militarism. Bismarck's unification of Germany (achieved through "blood and iron") fits this model.

Religious Nationalism

Religious nationalism intertwines national identity with a particular faith. The nation is defined partly through religious belonging.

• Examples include the Islamic Republic of Iran, where Shia Islam is central to national identity, and Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in India.
• This form often creates tension with secular ideologies and with religious minorities living within the nation's borders.

Nationalism in the 19th Century

The 19th century was nationalism's breakout era. It went from a set of ideas to a force that redrew the map of Europe.

Unification Movements

Two of the century's most significant political events were driven by nationalism:

• The Italian Risorgimento unified the fragmented Italian peninsula into a single kingdom in 1861 under Victor Emmanuel II, with figures like Garibaldi and Cavour leading the effort.
• German unification was achieved in 1871 under Prussian leadership. Otto von Bismarck orchestrated a series of wars and diplomatic maneuvers to bring dozens of German-speaking states together into one empire.

Both movements overcame deep regional divisions and foreign opposition through a combination of diplomacy, warfare, and popular mobilization.

National Self-Determination

The principle that nations have the right to govern themselves gained real traction during this period.

• The Greek War of Independence (1821-1832) against the Ottoman Empire inspired other subject peoples to seek their own states.
• New nations formed across the Balkans, including Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria, each carving out independence from larger empires.

Impact on European Politics

• Nationalism directly challenged the legitimacy of multi-ethnic empires like Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over many different national groups.
• The Revolutions of 1848, a wave of uprisings across Europe, were largely driven by nationalist and liberal demands. Most failed in the short term but signaled that the old order was under pressure.
• New nation-states shifted the balance of power and fueled rivalries that would eventually set the stage for World War I.

Nationalism and Imperialism

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nationalism and imperialism became deeply intertwined. National pride didn't stop at a country's borders; it drove expansion overseas.

Justifications for Colonialism

Nationalist ideologies provided several rationales for colonial conquest:

• The idea of a "civilizing mission" framed colonialism as a national duty to bring progress to "backward" peoples. Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" (1899) captures this mindset.
• Social Darwinism misapplied evolutionary theory to argue that some races and cultures were naturally superior, giving colonizers a pseudo-scientific justification.
• Economic nationalism held that colonies were necessary for national prosperity, providing raw materials and markets for manufactured goods.

National Prestige and Expansion

Colonial possessions became a scoreboard for national greatness. The Scramble for Africa (1880s-1900s) saw European powers racing to claim territory, driven as much by prestige as by economic calculation. Military victories in colonial conflicts were celebrated at home, and colonial exhibitions showcased imperial achievements to domestic audiences.

Resistance in Colonized Nations

Ironically, European nationalist ideas inspired the very movements that would eventually dismantle European empires.

• Colonized elites who studied in European schools encountered ideas about self-determination and popular sovereignty, then applied those ideas to their own situations.
• Cultural nationalism emerged as colonized peoples asserted their own identities against colonial impositions, reviving indigenous languages, traditions, and histories.

Nationalism in the 20th Century

The 20th century revealed nationalism at its most transformative and its most destructive.

World War I Catalysts

• Nationalist tensions in the Balkans were a direct trigger for the war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 by a Serbian nationalist set off a chain reaction of alliances and declarations of war.
• War propaganda on all sides relied heavily on nationalist themes to mobilize populations.
• The war's aftermath destroyed the multi-ethnic empires (Austria-Hungary, Ottoman, Russian) and created new nation-states across Central and Eastern Europe.
• U.S. President Woodrow Wilson championed the principle of national self-determination in the post-war settlement, though it was applied unevenly.

Interwar Period Developments

• The Treaty of Versailles (1919) redrew European borders along national lines, creating states like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland.
• The rise of fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany represented extreme, aggressive forms of nationalism that glorified the state, rejected democracy, and demonized outsiders.
• The Great Depression fueled economic nationalism, as countries raised tariffs and pursued self-sufficiency (autarky) policies.
• Nationalist movements in colonized territories gained momentum during this period.

World War II and Fascism

• Nazi Germany's racial nationalism drove territorial expansion, the conquest of Europe, and the Holocaust, the systematic genocide of six million Jews and millions of others. This remains the starkest example of where ethno-nationalist ideology can lead.
• Japanese ultranationalism fueled imperial ambitions across Asia and the Pacific.
• The Allied powers framed the war as a defense of national sovereignty against aggression.

Nationalism in the Modern Era

After 1945, nationalism continued to reshape the world, but in new contexts.

Decolonization Movements

The post-WWII period saw a wave of independence movements across Africa and Asia, driven by nationalist mobilization.

• Leaders like Gandhi (India), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) used nationalist rhetoric to rally their populations against colonial rule.
• Newly independent nations faced enormous challenges: building functional states, overcoming colonial economic structures, and forging national unity among diverse populations.
• Broader movements like Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism sought to unite nations around shared cultural or regional identities.

Cold War Influences

• The rivalry between the USA and USSR played out through nationalist conflicts around the world, with each superpower backing different sides in proxy wars.
• Nationalism became entangled with the ideological struggle between capitalism and communism. National liberation movements often aligned with one superpower or the other.
• The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 unleashed a resurgence of nationalism in former Soviet republics, as peoples like the Ukrainians, Georgians, and Baltic nations reasserted their national identities.

Globalization vs. Nationalism

Globalization and nationalism exist in constant tension.

• Increased global interconnectedness (trade, migration, digital communication) challenges traditional notions of national sovereignty.
• Multinational corporations and global financial systems operate across borders, sometimes limiting what national governments can control.
• Cultural globalization (Hollywood, pop music, social media) creates friction with local cultures and traditions.
• In response, nationalist backlash has grown in many countries, expressed through anti-immigration sentiments, protectionist trade policies, and skepticism of international institutions.

Critiques of Nationalism

Nationalism has been one of the most powerful forces in modern history, but it has also drawn serious criticism.

Xenophobia and Exclusion

• Nationalism can foster hostility toward outsiders, immigrants, refugees, and minority groups within the nation.
• Far-right nationalist movements in Europe and elsewhere have frequently been associated with anti-immigrant rhetoric and exclusionary policies.
• Nationalist education systems may promote ethnocentric worldviews that distort history and dehumanize other groups.

Conflict and War

• Extreme nationalism has been a major driver of international conflict, from World War I to ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
• Irredentist claims and border disputes rooted in nationalist ideologies continue to fuel tensions around the world.
• Nationalist rhetoric is regularly used to justify military interventions and territorial expansion.

Suppression of Minorities

The nation-state model assumes a relatively unified "people," which creates problems for minorities who don't fit the dominant national identity.

• Assimilation policies may pressure minorities to abandon their languages, religions, or cultural practices.
• Secessionist movements by minority groups are often met with forceful resistance from central governments invoking national unity.
• Human rights violations have been justified in the name of national security or territorial integrity.

Nationalism in Arts and Culture

Nationalism isn't just a political phenomenon. It has profoundly shaped artistic and cultural expression, and in turn, art has been one of the most effective tools for building national identity.

National Epics and Literature

• Epic poems like Finland's Kalevala and Portugal's Lusiads celebrated national heritage and gave peoples a shared literary tradition to rally around.
• Romantic-era writers drew on folklore, legends, and national myths. Sir Walter Scott's historical novels, for instance, romanticized Scotland's past and helped shape Scottish national identity.
• Literary movements across Europe promoted writing in vernacular languages rather than in Latin or the language of a colonial power, reinforcing the link between language and nationhood.

Patriotic Music and Anthems

• National anthems are among the most recognizable symbols of national identity, performed at state events, sporting competitions, and public ceremonies.
• Classical composers like Finland's Sibelius, Czechia's Dvořák, and Norway's Grieg incorporated folk melodies and national themes into their work, turning music into a vehicle for national pride.
• Patriotic songs have been used to commemorate historical events and instill a sense of shared belonging.

National Symbols and Flags

• Flags are designed to represent national values, history, or cultural elements. They become emotionally charged symbols that people rally around.
• National animals, plants, and landmarks serve as emblems of identity (the bald eagle for the USA, the cherry blossom for Japan).
• Monuments and memorials honoring national heroes and events reinforce collective memory and shape how citizens understand their nation's story.

Future of Nationalism

Nationalism isn't fading away. It's adapting to new circumstances, and its future trajectory is one of the most debated questions in contemporary politics.

Rise of Supranational Entities

• Organizations like the European Union ask member nations to share sovereignty on issues like trade, migration, and regulation. This directly challenges traditional nationalist thinking.
• Global problems like climate change and pandemics require cooperation that goes beyond national boundaries.
• Younger generations in many countries are developing more transnational and cosmopolitan identities, though this trend is uneven.

Resurgence of Populist Nationalism

• Recent years have seen a rise in populist nationalist movements across many countries, from Brexit in the UK to movements in Hungary, Brazil, India, and the United States.
• Economic uncertainty, cultural anxiety, and rapid demographic change fuel the appeal of leaders who promise to put "the nation first."
• Social media enables nationalist ideas to spread rapidly and organize supporters outside traditional political structures.

Challenges in Multicultural Societies

• Increasing diversity within nations raises difficult questions about what national identity means and how to balance unity with pluralism.
• Debates over multiculturalism vs. assimilation are ongoing in countries that receive significant immigration.
• Sub-national identities and regionalist movements (Catalonia in Spain, Scotland in the UK) challenge the cohesion of established nation-states.
• Finding ways to maintain national solidarity while respecting cultural diversity and minority rights remains one of the central political challenges of our time.