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Subjects | Fact sheet | Samples
Geography and politics: Sample feature essay
Nationalism and Citizenship
by Ian Derbyshire
Nationalism and its contribution to modern world conflicts
Nationalism is the world's most potent political ideology and lies at the heart of many of the world's most enduring, bitter, and intractable conflicts. Nationalism is founded on the belief that inhabitants of a geographically delimited 'nation' form a 'natural community', derived from a unique shared ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage. According to nationalism, the nation should be the focus of citizens' identity and loyalty and should form an independent nation state. During the 1950s and 1960s, with the development of internationalist sentiment and pan-national regional groupings, nationalism began to be viewed as outdated in the developed world.
However, since the 1970s there has been an unexpected revival in nationalist politics, particularly within Europe and Asia. From Euskadi (the Basque country, straddling northwest Spain and southwest France) to East Timor, Corsica to Chechnya, Kosovo to Korea,
nationalist issues now dominate the political agenda and nationalist movements generate armed conflict, terrorist outrages, and 'ethnic cleansing' genocide. Notwithstanding the unprecedented growth in the number of independent nation states, from 33 in 1914, 50 in 1945, 173 in 1989, and 192 in 2000, there exists considerable scope for further nation-building. Globally, there exist at least 6,000 linguistic groups and several hundred aspirant 'nations without states'. Three quarters of the world's 127 largest states contain at least one sizeable national minority that aspires to self-determination.
The concept of nationalism
The common symbols of a nation state are a flag, national anthem, head of state, passport, and currency. However, the feeling of national identity resides in the imagination and emotions of citizens. It is for this reason that nations are often referred to as 'invented' communities. A nation can live on in the minds and hearts of its people even when it no longer formally exists on the world political map – this is the case today with Kurdistan, whose people live in parts of southern Turkey and northern Iraq. At the heart of nationalist sentiment is a sense of belonging to a distinct ethnic group, separate from others. The sense of 'separateness' can arise from differences in language and religion, reinforced by a distinctive common historical experience, underpinned by a shared culture and mythology.
The emergence of nationalism
Ethnic and regional traditions have deep roots. However, identification with a nation is a more recent phenomenon. English national identity was forged early, by the Tudor aristocracy in the 16th century. After the Act of Union (1707) with Scotland, a British identity developed gradually. However, not until the late 18th century, with the philosophical writings of the German nationalist Johann Herder and the French revolution, did nationalism spread more widely across Europe. Previously, the focus of allegiance had been more local and personal, towards a fiefdom, a city, a guild, and/or a religious group. Early modern European states were based typically on dynastic alliances and embraced a range of ethnic communities, as exemplified by the Habsburg empire; while the orientation of the Christian (and Muslim) community was supra-national, aiming to embrace the whole of humanity.
Nationalism's emergence was made possible by several interconnected political, social, economic, and technological
developments:
- the destruction of feudal structures by large centralized states ruled, at first, by absolute monarchs
- the growing secularization of life and rupturing of Christian unity by the Reformation
- the creation by industrialization of a rising middle class anxious to participate in government and of an urban working class
searching for a common identity
- revived interest in national languages and traditions, following study by intellectuals, and its dissemination through the printing press
- the spread of literacy through public education
- inter-state military conflicts, leading to national conscription
- the revolution in communications.
Early stirrings of nationalism were seen in the anti-colonial revolts in the Americas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and in the European nationalist uprisings of 1830 and 1848, which were led by political liberals. With the founding of an Italian kingdom in 1861 and unification of Germany in 1871, a system of competing European nation states came into being. This provoked military rivalries in Europe and overseas, where colonial empires were established. As representative democracy spread, nationalism became an increasingly conservative ideology, drawn upon by right-wing parties to court support from sections of the newly enfranchised lower classes.
The 20th century's three nationalist waves
The 20th century saw three main waves of nation-building associated with nationalism. The first wave came at the end of World War I, which had been triggered by ethnic rivalries in the Balkans. The war was followed by dismemberment of the empires of the defeated Habsburg and Ottoman (Turkish) powers. Consequently, new states emerged in central and southern Europe, including Poland and Yugoslavia, while boundaries were also withdrawn at the expense of Germany. A new international body, the League of Nations, was set up in 1920, with the intention of arbitrating future international disputes. However, it lacked teeth and proved unable to prevent territorial expansion from the mid-1930s by Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy – states motivated by an extreme form of nationalism known as fascism, which was based on claims of national superiority.
The second, and most significant, nationalist wave followed the end of World War II, which began an unfolding process of decolonization by the European powers. New nation states were created in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, typically in response to pressure from national liberation movements, some of which had a socialist orientation. However, across central and southern Europe an 'Iron Curtain' of domination by Russia resulted in the smothering of nationalism and the incorporation of a number of nations, including the Baltic states, as parts of the Soviet Union.
The third, and still continuing, wave of new nation-building commenced from 1989, with the collapse of Soviet communism. Nationalist sentiment was uncorked in central and southern Europe and in central Asia. New states were created in which political parties drew on nationalism to attract democratic support, while violent ethnic conflicts and insurgencies erupted in the Balkans
(Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo) and Caucasus (Chechnya, Georgia, and Nagorno-Karabakh).
Nationalism as a source of ethnic conflict
Nationalism can take a range of forms. It can drive a state into expansionist military conflicts in an attempt to increase the nation's power or to bring within the nation's borders national groups living outside. The latter is known as 'irredentist nationalism'. It is what initially motivated Nazi German expansion during the late 1930s and what has been behind the contemporary Armenian and Azerbaijani dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. Nationalism can also lead to persecution or, at its extreme, genocide of ethnic minorities, as occurred in the Holocaust and has been seen in recent 'ethnic cleansing' in Rwanda and Burundi. However, nationalism can also be benign, motivating economic progress through pride in the nation.
Nationalism arises as a source of conflict most commonly when large numbers of people identify with a different 'nation' from that in which they live. Their domination by 'foreign' rulers may be the result of conquest, partition, or an earlier agreement. Reactions to this domination can vary. In many cases, it leads to peaceful, law-abiding demands for increased cultural or political autonomy (as seen in the nationalist movements in Catalonia in northeast Spain and in Wales) or political agitation for independence (for example in Québec, Canada, and in Scotland, with the Scottish Nationalist Party). However, in other cases it can lead to militant insurgency or terrorist movements, such as Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the Basque country and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Northern Ireland. Many recent civil wars, for example the Tamil separatist conflict in northern Sri Lanka and the Kosovo conflict within Yugoslavia, have been triggered by such armed insurgency movements, reacting to what they perceive as discrimination against their national community. In such cases, differences in religion have intensified the conflict. It is not typical, however, for insurgencies to succeed. It often takes a crisis in the legitimacy of the ruling regime, as occurred for example in Indonesia (with respect to East Timor) in 1999, to make the achievement of independence possible.
During the last half-century, the course of nation-building has been typically two-staged. Ruling colonial powers have been overthrown by a broad-based national liberation front, which has then inherited a state whose borders have not always matched those of its constituent national groups. Consequently, many newly liberated states have faced the problem of insurrection by national
minorities within. This has been a particularly acute problem in Africa, where colonial states were artificial constructions set over more enduring tribal structures. Civil wars have been endemic in the region, from the 1967–70 Biafran civil war in Nigeria through to contemporary Angola, Congo, Somalia, and Sudan. In Asia, multi-ethnic India, Indonesia, and Myanmar also continue to face armed insurgencies. Meanwhile, as a legacy of the collapsed Soviet empire, scattered across central Asia, the Caucasus region, and eastern Europe, are some 20 million formerly dominant ethnic Russians – a source of potential 'irredentist nationalist' unrest.
The future for nationalism
Nationalism is an ascendant ideology at the beginning of the 21st century. Within Europe, far-right nationalist parties have made electoral gains in Austria and France, while power has been devolved recently in Belgium, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Concurrently, symbolized by the introduction of the euro currency and EU passports, the sovereignty of Europe's traditional nation states has been diminished. This has created confusion in national identities. For example, in multi-ethnic Britain, citizens now claim a range of identities from European, Commonwealth, British, English/Scottish/Welsh through to regional and separate ethnic identities.
It is likely that in the developing world national tensions will remain a source of bitter and bloody conflicts, as dominant groups attempt to resist the formation of new secessionist states. Looking forward 20 or 50 years, it is likely that the number of nation states will have increased still further – to 250 or more. New nation states such as Chechnya, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ossetia, Somaliland, and Tibet are likely to have become established. They will form part of an increasingly economically integrated 'New World Order', which will be dominated by a relatively small number of broader regional political and economic groupings.
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