Week 5: Inventing Nations

Week 5Inventing Nations

“The modern world has become inconceivable and unintelligible without nations and nationalism.”

–Anthony Smith, “The Origins of Nations” (1989)

A Few (Big) Questions Historians Ask

• What is a nation?• When did modern national consciousness

emerge? How was national identity invented?• What is the relationship between states and

nations?• What accounts for the diverse paths and

outcomes of national movements? • What accounts for the powerful attraction of

nationalism in the modern era?

Orientating Points

• Modern nations and nationalism heirs of French Revolution

• From civic to ethnic conceptions of nation• National movements vs. nationalism• Nation as “imagined community” based on

the “invention of traditions”• National identity never complete

Two models of nation-building

• Western Europe model (early): close parallel between dominant ethnic group and modern state (e.g.., England, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden)

• Central and Eastern Europe model (late): state not coincident with society, minority/ “exogenous” ruling class dominates multiple ethnic groups

Early and Late Nation-Building

Hroch’s Three Phases of Nationalism

• Phase A: scholarly research and literary work help spread historical, linguistic, customary information about ethnic group.

• Phase B: new activism directed at political and social demands, proselytizing among own ethnic group to “awaken” national consciousness

• Phase C: Emergence of mass movement

Cultural sites of nation-building

History and folklore

Language

“High” Culture

Discovering the Volk: The Grimm Brothers fairy tales

Inventing national languages

The artist as national soul: Richard Wagner (1813–1883)

“I am the most German being. I am the German spirit. Question the incomparable magic of my works—compare them with the rest and you can for the time being say no differently than that—it is German! But what is this German? It must be something wonderful, mustn’t it, for it is humanly finer than all else?—Oh heavens! It should have a soil, this German! I should be able to find my people! What a glorious people it ought to become. But to this people only could I belong.”

“Ride of the Valkyries”: Toward German unification

Liberal nation-building: Italy

Conservative nation-building: Germany

Declaration of German Empire, 1871. Why Versailles?