Leonhard Nation States and Wars

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Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universitt Freiburg

JRNLEONHARD

Nation-States and Wars

European and Transatlantic Perspectives

Originalbeitrag erschienen in:Timothy Baycroft (Hrsg.): What is a Nation? Europe 1789-1914.Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006, S. [231]-254


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D

ITED BY


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What is a Nation?

Europe 1789-1914

Edited by

TIMOTHY BAYCROFT

and

MARK HEWITSON

OXFOR

UNIVERSITY PRESS


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Acknowledgements

The fact that this is a com missioned volume rather than a collection of conference

papers has n ot prevented the ed itors accum ulating a long list of debts. The authors

were able to hear each other s contribution at a conference kindly hosted by

the German Historical Institute in London. Hagen Schulze, the Director of the

Institute, was instrumental in helping to initiate the project and made very m uch

appreciated suggestions throughout.

For a comparative topic of this scale, we requiredand founda large

number of sponsors. In addition to the German Historical Institute, we are

indebted to the B ritish Academ y, the Germ an H istory Society, the A ssociation

for the Study of Modern Italy, Sheffield University s Centre for Nineteenth-

Century Studies, and UC L'S Centre for E uropean Studies for their financial and

logistical support.

We are also very grateful to Peter Alter, John Breuilly, Miles Taylor, and

Martin Brown for acting as chairs of panels and for stimulating discussion of

various questions, as we ll as sharing their expertise on the subject of na tionalism

m ore genera lly. Tog ether with intellectual stimuli provided by the contributors

themselves, their interventions made possiblewe hopea coherent volume

on a bew ilderingly broad and u nwieldy topic. At a later stage, we also received

welcom e suggestions and support from Oxford Un iversity Press's editorial staff

and anonymous referees. Any remaining errors in the volume, which are of

course difficult to excise completely from a book of this type, are very much

our own.

Mark Hewitson, University College London

Timothy Baycroft, University of Sheffield

M arch 2006


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Nation-States and Wars

European and Transatlantic Perspectives

Jrn Leonhard

INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS CIVIC AND

ETHNIC NATIONALISMS

Research on the historical phenom enon of nationalism in Europe has, for a long

time, concentrated m ainly on single cases of nation-building or on the dev elop-

ment of specific typologies, generating ideal types of nation-building processes. '

One of the m ost influential typological differentiations was that between p olitical

and cultural nations, a mod el which, based upon Friedrich M einecke's distinction

between Staatsnation and

Kulturnation

had an important impact on W est German

perceptions of nation and nationality after 1945.

2

This distinction was also

present in the apparently clear dichotomy between apparently typical Western

and Eastern nationalisms.

3

Analyses focusing on this dichotomy operated . with

1

See with particular reference to German research literature Dieter Langewiesche, `Nation,

Nationalismus, Nationalstaat: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven',

Neue Pol i t ische

Literatur,

40 (1995), 190-236; id., Nation,

Nationalismus, Nat ionalstaat

in D eutschland

und Europa

(Munich, 20 00) and id. and Georg Sch midt (eds.),

Fderat ive

Nation:

D eu

chlandkonzepte

von der

Reformation bis zum Ersten W eltkr ieg

(Munich, 2000); see from an Anglo-Am erican perspective Geoff

Eley and Ronald G rigor Suny, `Introduction: From the Mom ent of Social History to the Work of

Cultural Representation', in eid. (eds.), B ecom ing National: A R eader (Oxford, 1996), and An thony

Smith, Nationalism and M odernism : A Critical Su rvey of R ecent T heories of Nations and N ationalism

(London,1998); see for Franco-German comparisons Heinz-Gerhard Haut, `Der

Nationali

smus

in

der neueren deutschen und franzsischen Geschichtswissenschaft ,

in

Etienne

Francois,

Hannes

Siegrist, and Jakob Vogel (eds.), Nation u n d Emotion: Deutschland

und F rankre ich im

V ergleich, 19.

und

20.

Jahrhundert

(Gttingen, 1995), 39 -55; for a general European overview see Peter Alter,

Nat ional ismus

(Frankfurt am Main, 1985); Hagen Schulze,

Staa t und N ation in der

e u r o p i s c h e n

G e s c h i c h t e

(Munich, 19 94); John Breuilly,

Nationalism and the State, 2nd edn. (Manchester,1993);

and Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter (eds.),

T he N ational Ques tion in Eu rope in Historical Contex t

(Cambridge, 1993).

Friedrich Meinecke,

W e ltb r ge r tum und Na t i ona l s ta a t : S tud i e n zu r

Genesis des

d e u t s c h e n

Nationalstaates (1907), 6th edn. (Munich, 1922), 1 22.

3 See H einrich A ugust W inkler (ed.),

Nationalismus,

2nd edn. (Knigstein,

1985).


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232

rn Leonhard

different historical patterns of apparently successful, handicapped, or failed

patterns of mode rnization. This perspective gained particular attention because of

the specific experiences of Fascism, National Socialism, and Stalinism and

especially by the deve loping C old W ax confrontation after 1945.

Against this background Hans Kohn and Louis S. Snyder distinguished an

essentially political meaning of the nation in West Europe, which according to

their definition aim ed at establishing a pluralist society, from an E ast Europe an

model of an essentially cultural nationalism, which was characterized by a tendency

to focus on cultural and political unity by the system atic exclusion of minorities.

The differences between both models a civic W est European concept of nation

and nationality, focusing on citizenship and individual rights on the one han d and

an ethnic Central and East European one on the other, concentrating on shared

myths, culture, and common historyalso reflected Popper s paradigm of the

`open society ' in the w est and its opposite in the East. W est European national-

ism, as experienced in Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, seem ed

to be based upon ex isting political realities, thus avoiding m ythological construc-

tions. In contrast, different regions in Central and Eastern E urope as w ell as Asia

pointed to the significance of cultural traditions and m yths as well as constructs of

ethnic unity. 4

The dominating antagonism behind these bipolar typologies was

that between a com mu nity of equal state citizens, forming a nation on the basis of

their political will, and a people's com mu nity, generated no t by the po litical will of

a sovereign nation but by the definition and communication of certain cultural

and m ythological bonds. According to this typology, which justified a pioneering

and successful `western' path of m odernization and defined latecomers accord-

ingly, two d ifferent social profiles could be applied to these d istinct deve lopments.

whereas the W estern type of nationalism seeme d an essentially bourgeois phe-

nom enon, East European nationalism appe ared as the result of the aristocracy's

politics or caused by the m asses, thus again underlining distinct paths of e conomic

and social modernization.

Another major typology was conceptionalized in the 1960s, integrating

elements of K ohn's and Snyder 's earlier works.

In his influential essay on the

typology of the nation-state in Europe, Theodor Schieder presented three different

mode ls. First, there was the W est European m odel of nation-states in Britain and

France, originating from the succe ssful revolutions in the seventeenth a nd eigh-

teenth centuries which had constituted these early nation-states as expressions of

the political will of its citizens. Second ly, nation-states in Ce ntral and South ern

Europe w ere established. between 1815 a nd 1871 throug h territorial integration,

by which hitherto stateless nations were transform ed into new nation-states. In

4

See Hans Kohn, ie Idee

des

N ational ism us: Ursprung u nd G eschichte bis zur Franzsischen

Revolution

(Heidelberg, 1950); id.,

N ationalism us:

I ts Meaning a nd History

(Princeton, 1965), and

Louis L. Snyder, The Mean ing o f Nat ional i rm (New Brunswick, 1954).

5 See

Eugen

Lemberg,

Nationalismus vol.

i:

Psychologie und Geschichte ;

vol. ii:

S ozio log ie und

politische P gogik (Hamburg,1964).


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Nation-States and tears

33

contrast to the meaning and representation of the nation's political will in Britain

and France, the driving forces behind this process had been, according to

Schieder, language, ethnicity, and history. Thirdly, national movements in the

East and Sou th-East of Europe represented historical phenomena in m ulti-ethnic

em pires. In contrast to nation-building in Cen tral and Southern Europe through

integration, Schieder identified a third type of nation-building by m eans of seces-

sion

against an existing empire-state, as in the cases of the Russian, the Austrian,

and the Ottoman Empiresa long-term process that came to an end only after

1918. According to Schieder,

t

was n ot only possible to identify clearly different

structural patterns behind these three typologies, but also distinct geograph ical

spacesWestern, Central, and Eastern Europeas well as distinct periods in

which nation-states developed.6

During the 1970s and 1980s the discussion about European nationalisms

became increasingly dominated by modernization theories.

7 Focusing on the

relation between political and socio-economic modernity and nationalism, Ernes

Gellner analysed European nationalism w ith regard to processes of homogeniza-

t ion which according to him were necessitated by the structures of dynam ically

developing industrial societies.

Taking up this approach many historians have

concluded that nationalism as a mass phenom enon could not really develop in the

socio-econom ically backward E uropean Ea st before the last third of the nineteenth

century. If new typologies w ere conceptionalized in the 1980s, as for instance in

the case of Rainer M. Lepsius's differentiation between

V olksnation, Ku lturnation,

Staatsnation,

and

Klassennation,

they were usu ally limited to the study of one par-

ticular case, thus avoiding systematic and com parative studies. 9

In con trast, Lich

Greenfeld analysed different `roads to m odernity', com paring five cases covering a

long period from the early mo dern era to the twentieth century. Arguing from the

English experience in the seven teenth century, Green feld identified an `individu-

alistic civic nationalism' which already encom passed the m odern conc ept of the

nation and which, originating from England, was also fundam ental for the North

Am erican concept of nation and national identity. Confronted with this Anglo-

American model, European continental societies seemed to develop their own

6 See Theodor Schieder,

`Typologie und Erscheinungsformen des

Nationalstaats in Europa'

(1966), in id.,

National ismus und Nat ionalstaat : S tudien zum nat ionalen

Pro b l e m im modernen

Europa,

ed. Otto D ann and H ans-Ulrich Wehler (Gttingen,

1992 ), 65-86; see also E. Kedourie,

Nationalismus

(Munich, 1971).

7

See Stein R okkan, `D ie vergleichende Analyse der Staaten

-und N ationenbildung', in Wolfgang

Zapf

(ed.),

h e o r ie n d e s s o z ia l e n W a nd e ls

(Cologne, 1970) 228-52; Karl W. Deutsch,

Nat ionenb i ldung Nat ionalstaat ,

Integration (D asseldorf, 197 2), and Shm uel N. Eisenstadt and Stein

Rokk an (eds.), Building States and Nations,

2 vols. (Beverly Hills, Calif., 197 3).

8

See Ernest Gellner, Nat ions a nd Nat iona l ism (Oxford, 1983); Karl Deutsch, National ism a nd

Soc ia l Com m unica t ion

(Cambridge, Mass, 1962); id.,

D e r

Na t i o na lis

m u s u n d seine

Alternativen

(Munich, 1972); Otto Dann,

Nat ional ismus und soz ia ler W and el

(Hamburg, 1978); and Miroslav

Hroch, Social Precond itions of Nat ional Revival in E urope

(Camb ridge, 1985).

9

See M. R ainer Lepsius, `Nation

und N ationalismus h eute', in Heinrich A ugust W inkler (ed.),

Nationalismus in der Welt von

heute

Gttingen,

1982), 12-27.


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234

rn

Leonhard

responses, generating nationalisms w hich were m ore influenced by indigenous,

collective, and xenophobic traditions. According to Greenfeld, despite differences in

detail, the Eu ropean continental soc ieties' oppos ition to the E nglish individualistic

and civic nationalism characterized both Germany and Russia, but had also a

profound impact on the F rench case.lo

During the 1990s three very different trends have influenced the design of

research on nations and nationalisms. First, and in a critical response to A nthony

Smith's premiss of an essentially ethnic justification of m odern nations, Benedict

Anderson introduced the concept of nations as `imagined communities . The

construct of national self-images conce aled the very diversity, heterogeneity, and

com plexity of social realities.

This assumption could easily be combined with

Gellner's interpretation desc ribing nationalism as a pa rticular state in the dev elop-

men t of industrial societies.

1 2

The fact that m odern industrial societies required at

the same time a d ifferentiated and a levelled social basis seemed to explain the

success of na tional myths in a period of ac celerated and intensified industrial trans-

forma tion. Following Gellner's interpretation, the invention of the nation therefore

corresponde d directly to the need to hom ogenize societies in a period of dynam ic

change. 1 3

Secondly, historians had to respond to the collapse of the Soviet Emp ire

and the subsequen t end of the Cold W ar in 1990-1. This constellation has led to a

rediscovery of nation, nation-state, and nationalism as fund ame ntal concepts in the

former m embe r states of the W arsaw Pact but also in Russia itself '

4

Thirdly, and

against the background o f an intensified process of Europe an integration which

tends to weaken traditional institutions of the classical nation-state by supranational

institutions and at the same time strengthens regions through devolution, research

interests have shifted increasingly towards regionalism and fed eralism in historica

perspective. 1 5

'The com plex relation between nation and region becom es partic-

ularlyo

n the border regions of Central and Eastern Europe.16

10

See Liah Greenfeld,

Five R oads to M odernity (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), on early-modern roots

see also Adrian Hastings,

T he C onstruction of N ationhood: Ethnicity, R eligion and N ationalism

(Cambridge, 1997).

11

See Anthony Smith,

T he E thnic Origins o f N ation (Oxford, 1987 ), and Benedict Anderson,

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

(London, 1983).

2

See Wilfried von Below, `Nation, Nationalstaat, Nationalismus ,

in Dieter

Hohlen

(ed.),

Lexikon

der Politik,

vol. i: Politische T heorien,

ed. Dieter Nohlen and R ainer-Olaf Schulze (Munich,

1995), 357, see Ernest Gellner, N ationalism us und M oderne

(Berlin,1991).

3

See R. Baubck,

`Nationalismus

versus

Demokratie',

in

sterreichische Zeitschrift r

Politikwissenschaft, 20 (1991 ), 73 -90; Eric J. Hobsbawm and T erence Ranger (eds.),

Th e Invention of

Tradition

(Cambridge, 1983); David Cannadine, Die E rindung der

britischen M onarchie 1820-1994

(Berlin, 1994); and Geoffrey Cubitt (ed.),

Im agining N ations

(Manchester, 1998).

4

See And reas Kappeler,

R uf land als V ielvlkerreich: Entstehung Ge schichte, Zerfall

(Munich,

1992); from an Anglo-American perspective see Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (eds.),

R einterpreting R ussia (London, 1999); and V era Tolz,

Inv enting the Nation: R ussia

(London, 2001) .

5

See Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), N ationalism us, N ationalitten,

Supranationalitt

(Stuttgart,

1993); Barry Jones and M ichael Keating (eds.), T he Eu ropean Union and the R egion (Oxford, 1995);

and

Raimund Krmer

(ed.),

Regionen

in der

Europischen

Union (Berl in, 1998).

6

See Lan gewiesche and S chm idt (eds.), Fderative

Nation and Maiken Umbach (ed.),

German

Federalism: Past, Present and Future

(London, 2002) .


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Nation-States and wan

35

For all the benefits of these typologies and mo dels, none of them has yet sys-

tema tically concentrated on the m eaning of war exp eriences for nation-building

and the developm ent of national self-images, although all approaches show that

the history of nation and nationality includes numerous violent conflicts. But

how are we to unde rstand the character of nation-states as w ar mach ines, and how

did the experience of w ar influence the character of nation-building between the

poles of civic and ethnic nationalisms? D id war experience s play a greater role in

societies shaped by eth nic nationalism than in those in wh ich civic nationalism

dominated? In order to contribute to a fresh look at the relevance of the civic-

ethnic model, the following com parison seeks to analyse how concep ts of national

identity were shaped by wa r experiences in France, Germ any, Britain,

and the

United States.

WAR AND NATION-BUILDING IN COMPARATIVE

PERSPECTIVE

The modern concepts of nation and nation-state were inextricably linked with

experience s of war. This is not only true from a Germ an or an Italian perspective,

that is to say from the perspective of successful external nation-building through

wars, be it between 1 59

and

1861 in the Italian case or between 1864 and 1871

in the German as 17

The long-term pro cess ofstate-building, by which Eu rope's

political map changed dramatically from the early modern period to the First

World Wax can also be described as a history of warfare and its revolutionary

impacts. Most of the num erous territorial states of the early modern p eriod did

not survive this violent restructuring of Europe .

Between

the last third of the eigh-

teenth century and the end of the nineteenth century the num ber decreased from

about 500 units around 1800 to about 20 states around 1900. State-building,

mu ch intensified between 1794 and 1815 , was directly linked to the experience of

wars, and the British war-state of the eighteenth century is a

particular

illustration.

18

As a part of this complex process, justifications of war changed,

pointing to the new mean ing of nation and nation-state as dominant paradigms

of political and social legitimacy.19

17

See the chapters by Ute

Frevert, RudolfJaun, Hew Strachan, Stig Frster,

and Dietrich Beyrau

in

Ute

Frevert (ed.), M ilitr und Gesel lschaft im

19.

und 20 . Jahrhundert

(Stuttgart, 1997), 17-142;

for the German case see in particular the chapters by Georg Sch midt, Horst Carl, and Nikolaus

Buschmann

in Langewiesche and Schmidt (eds.), Fderative

Nation

33-111.

18

See John B rewer,

The Sinews o f Power: War, Money a nd the Engl ish State , 1688-1783 (1988;

New York 1989).

19

See Charles Tilly (ed.),

The Form at ion of Nat ional S tates in W estern E urope

(Princeton, 197 5);

id., Reflections on the History of European State-Making', ibid. 3-8 3, p. 42 ; and id., `States and

Nationalism in Europe 1492-1992 , in John L. Comaroff and Paul C. Stem (eds.),

P e r s p e c t iv e s o n

Nat ional ism an d W ar

(Amsterdam, 1995), 187-2 04.


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236

rn Leonhard

But w ar not only a ccomp anied the external processes of state-building. It also

represen ted, at least in contem porary po litical discourses and in particular from

the 1750s onw ards, a possible means of political ema ncipation and participation.

War changed its character from a merely dynastic affair and a cabinet war, fought

with m ercenaries from different countries who did not identify with an abstract

notion of nation, to a war fought, in theory at least, in the name of the whole

nation and fought by the whole nation in arms. On the one hand, and since the

last third of the eighteenth century, new form s of

national w ars or peop le s w ars,

in

particular the Am erican W ar of Independence and then the F rench revolutionary

wars, meant that more groups of society were now directly affected by war.

Warfare based upon mass armies and collective conscription transcended the

traditional separation of the civil population from the experience of violent

conflict, as had bee n the aim of traditional cabinet wars since the mid-seve nteenth

century, fought in the nam e of mo narchical, dynastic, and territorial interests, but

excluding the horrors of civil war as they had b een experienced in the seventeenth

century. 2

On the other han d, national wars strengthened the state's legitimacy as

the dominating institution which could provide for the financial and military

means of warfare.

A w ar fought in the name of the en tire nation also provoked hitherto unknow n

expectations of political and social participation. The transformation from the

traditional corporatist structures and privileged estates of the European

ancien

regim e ,

from a society of feudal subjects, to a class-based society of citizens was

linked to, and partly even caused by, experiences of war. This ambivalence of

war externally as a form of collective aggression and violence and, internally, as a

means of participationis not just the result of the historian s restrospective

causality, but stood already behind contem porary war discourses and con trover-

sies over the precise m eaning and po ssible justification of war. 2 1 Thus, the concept

of civil war, so dominan t in the critical periods of the seven teenth cen tury with its

religious conflicts in various European societies, found its way back into

justifications of wax a fter 1750. But in contrast to the seve nteenth cen tury, it was

now no longer a civil war caused by co nfessional conflicts, but fought in the light

of the secular conc epts of liberty and equality

as

derived from the natural right

20

See Herfried M

er,

Ober den K rieg: S tationen der Kriegsgeschichte im Spiegel

ihrer

theoretis-

chen

Reflexion,

2nd edn. (Weilerswist, 2003 ), 53 -5 and 7 5-7 ; see for the German state of research

Jrg Echternkamp and Sven Oliver Mller (eds.), D ie Politik der N ation:

Deu tscher Nationalismus in

Krieg

und K risen

(Munich, 2002); Werner Rsener (ed.), S taat und

Krieg: 14)m Mittelalter bis zur

Moderne (Gttingen,

2000); and Edgar W olfrum,

Krieg

und .Frieden

in derNeuzeit:

V om W estflischen

Frieden bis zum Z w eiten W l tkrieg

(Darmstadt, 2003), 49-51,66-8, and 95-7.

21

See Alan Forrest, `The Nation in Arms I: The French Wars', in Charles Townshend (ed.),

T he

Oxf ord History of M odern W ar

(Oxford, 2000), 55-73 ; D avid French, `The Nation in Arms II: The

Nineteenth Century', ibid. 7 4-93; and D aniel Moran and A rthur Waldron (ed.), T he People in A rms:

M ilitary M y th and National M obilization since the French R ev olution

(Cambridge, 2003); see also

Johannnes Kunisch (ed.),

Staa tsver fassung und Heeresver fassung in er

europ i schen Gesch i ch te d e r

f rh en Neu ze i t (Berlin, 1986); id.,

F r s t

Ge se l l sc ha f t

Kr ieg :

S tu d ie n z u r

bel l iz is t ischen Dispo s i t ion

d e s absoluten Frstenstaates

(Cologne, 1992).


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37

philosophy. Already in the 1760s the French philosopher Abbe M ably described

the expansionist wars of the eighteenth century as the natural consequence of

monarchical despotism. This justified a new and international civil war of all

suppressed peoples against their mon archical oppressors, and he regarded such an

international civil war as a `bien , legitimizing in this context the `nation

militaire'. 22

During the French Revolution and the subsequent wars from 1792 to

1815 such ideas assumed a new significance. However, the wars of this period

soon dem onstrated that the paradigm of an international and revolutionary civil

war of all suppressed peoples ag ainst their despotic suppressors was soon replaced

by national wars between distinct states. Conflicts from the 1790s onwards

therefore marked a middle position between traditional cabinet wars that had

characterized European history since the end of the T hirty Years W ax and a ne w

concept of c ivil war in the nam e of abstract principles.23

The ambivalent complexity of war experiences became more obvious in the

course of the nineteenth century: on the one hand , the wars of the nineteenth cen-

tury were in m any ways still fought according to the rules of traditional cabinet

wars, although the wars of the 1860s clearly showed signs of transformation from

Clausewitz s `absolute war into `total war .

2 4 On the other hand, these wars

reflected, in theory at least, each individual fighter's identification with a m ore

abstract notion of nationa lity and na tion, and this justification ofw ar was clearly a

legacy of the civil war paradigm , as it had bec ome revived through the experiences

in America and France since the last third of the eighteenth century. If the

contemporary concept of national war pointed already to the connection between

the citizen s duty to defend the fatherland and his recognition as a politically

participating subject, then the

people s war

transcended this connotation even

further.

25 Already during the 1760s and 1770s many American writers had

referred to the war against the British as a `people's w ar', representing a people's

ability to organize an d m obilize its military in the absence of a m onarchical state

and at the sam e time ch allenging the traditional state 's m onopoly of arm s.

26 In

France the prospect of a revolutionary people's war was also seen and perceived

as

a potential threat by the new revolutionary regimes after 1792. The regimes there-

fore responded with deliberate attempts to control and channel this development.

In the course of the nineteenth century the people s war generated distinct

forms o f warfare. Three ideal types can be distinguished. First, guerrilla warfare

stood for the ideal type of a pe ople's war. Following the co llapse or the paralysis of

22

Gabriel

Bonnot, Abbe de M ably,

D e s d r o i ts e t d e s d e v o i rs d u c it o y e n

(Ken, 1789), 93-4.

23

See Johannes Kunisch and Herfried Mnkler.,(eds.),

Die Wiedergeburt d e s

K r i e g e s a u s d e m

Geist

der R evo lu t ion :

S t u d ie n z u m bellizistischen

Diskurs des ausgehenden 18 . und be g i nne nd e n

1 9 .

Jahrhunderts

(Berlin, 1999).

24

Carl von Clausewitz,

`Vom Kriege' (1832134), in Reinhard Stumpf (ed.),

Kriegstheorie und

K r i e g s g e s c h i c h t e :

Carl von Clausewitz und

Helmuth von M oltke

(Frankfurt am M ain, 1993), 318-19.

25

See Rainer

Wohlfeil,

`Der

Vo lkskrieg im Zeitalter

Na poleons', in H einz-Otto Sieburg (ed.),

Napoleon

und

Eu r opa

(Cologne, 1971), 318-32.

2 5 David Ramsay,

T h e

Hutort

of theAmer ican Revolut ion: A New Edi t ion,

vol.

(London, 1793), 325 .


13/29

238

Jrn Leonhard

a state's authority, it was the pop ulation which now o rganized and c arried out mil-

itary actions, not in traditional battles but rather in small, individual actions,

exemplified by the Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleonic regular troops in

1808. Secondly, militia armies com bined the two principles of voluntary service

with that of state control and professional military leadership in order to fight

larger battles and to u se the m ass mo bilization of nations in arms. The A merican

W ax of Independence as w ell as the early years of the French revolutionary wars

after 1792 provide exam ples of this type. Thirdly, ma ss conscript arm ies stood for

the attem pt to fully control and regu late a people's mob ilization for war. It pro-

vided the military and fiscal state with enormous new resources of power. The

principle of conscription as a mean s of defending the w hole nation also justified

the use of force necessary to overcom e popular resistance against the rigours of

com pulsory military service.. France during the Napoleonic Em pire and Prussia

after the early nineteenth century exem plified this type.

2 7

In all these categories of

people's wars particular elements of total warfare were o bvious, although

total war

with its new industrial character and hitherto unknown numbers of victims

becam e a collective experience only after 1914. However, already the wars of the

second half of the century, the Crim ean w ar, but in particular the Am erican Civil

W ar between 1861 and 1 65 and the Wars of German Unification between 1864

and 1871, pointed to a transformation in the meaning ofw ar and a changing char-

acter of modern warfare: this was essentially characterized by a new combination

of technological progress, based upon increased firepower and railway transport,

and mass mobilization in the name of an abstract ideal of nationality and the

nation-state. The state s financial, economic, and military means to achieve its

aims reache d a peak. This new dime nsion of mobilization also necessitated a new

ideological justification of war. War was no longer regarded as a conflict over

territory or dynastic interests, but it was fought for the ultimate existence of

nations and peoples. This necessitated the stigmatization of the enemy and the

overcom ing of the traditional separation betwee n a state's armies and its people.

The essential distinction between the military and the civic sphere came into

question,

s

both the actions of the North American General Sherman in

the southern states of the Confederation during the Am erican Civil War and the

popular warfare of the French against the German invaders after September

1870 illustrated.

The intensive interaction between w ar and nation-building since the eighteenth

century is obvious. It included at the sa me time the new ideal of the politically par-

ticipating citizen as the natural defender of the fatherland and hence a resurgence of

27

See Stig

Frster,

Vom Volkskr ieg zum tota len

Krieg? Der

Am erikanische Brgerkrieg

1861-1865, der DeutschFranzsische Krieg 1870/71

und

die

Anfnge moderner

Kriegsfhrung', in

Walther L.

Bernecker

and Volker

Dotterweich

(eds.),

Deu tschland in den internationalen Beziehungen

des 19 . und 20.

Jahrhunderts:

Festschrift f it Josef Becker

z u m

65.

Geburtstag

(Munich,1996), 78-9;

see also

Ute

Frevert,

Die

kasernierte Nation:

M ili trdienst und Z ivi lgesel l schaft

in Deutschland

Mu nich, 2001).


14/29

N ation-S tates and tears

39

the civil war paradigm against the idea of cabinet wars, separating the military

sphere from that of civil society. From that point of view the p erceived national

character of conflicts after 1792 provoked c ivic connotations of citizenship and

political expectations, participation through conscription being the most o bvious of

these. But the nation in arms also m arked the beginning of a long-term process

towards a radicalization of both national self-images an d imag es of the enem y,

thereby integrating many ethnic conn otations focusing on belligerent m yths and

military me mories. The following comparison seeks to dem onstrate that war experi-

ences indifferent cases tended to am algamate civic and ethn ic nationalisms, so that

any ideal-type separation between the two cannot ea sily be m aintained.

FRANCE: REVOLUTIONARY CITIZENSHIP AND

THE NATION IN ARMS

The conc ept ofwar nationalism and a nation in arm s originated in the years of the

French Re volution, but universal and com pulsory military service was the conse-

quence of unforeseen events. Many of the French

cahiers de dolances, which pre-

pared the meeting of the General Estates in Versailles in summer 1789, had

dem anded the a bolition of the royal practice of recruiting provincial militias, and

indeed m any bourgeois writers had even hoped that a new constitutional regime

would m ark the beginning of a new era of permane nt peace. However, within a

few years, conscript soldiers formed the ran k and file of the French armies defend -

ing the fatherland against the arm ies of the Eu ropean counter-revolutionary First

Coalition.

2 8

It was in this context that the idea of a military nation, a nation in

arms prepared to defend the revolution's achievements, became prominent. The

National Con vention dec reed that `the batallion organ ized in each district shall be

united under a banner bearing the inscription: The French people risen against

tyranny. In August 1793 the assembly went even further and laid down the

principle of a total mobilization of society in the nam e of defending the nation:

young men were to go forth to battle, married men would forge arms, women

were to m ake tents and clothing, and the aged were `to preach h atred of kings and

the unity of the R epublic'.29

The old army of the

ancien regim e,

in which purchase of commissions had been

a privilege of the rich and aristocratic, seem ed to be a m ore than legitimate object

of reform. At the same time, there had already been a pre-revolutionary and

enlightened concept of conscription. Already in 1772 Rousseau had advised the

Poles that only a w ell-trained m ilitia, recruited from citizens who ac cepted their

duty as the natural defenders of a republic, could assure the defence and existence

28

See Richard Challener,

T he F r e nc h T he o ry o f the Na t i on i n A rm s 18 6 6 -193 9 (New York,

1965), 3-9.

29

Jean B. Duvergier (ed.),

Collect ion comp lete des lots, crets, ordon nan ces, r iglemens, avis du

c o r u e i l d e

tat .. . de 17 88 a

1830 ,

30 vo ls. (Paris, 183 4-8), vi. 107 -8.


15/29

240

rn

Leonhard

of a free nation. 3 After 1792 it was prim arily the harsh m ilitary realities which

necessitated the formation of armies which were of a far greater size than the

professional forces em ployed in dynastic wars of the earlier eighteenth century.

W hat distinguished the ideological justification which referred to p atriotism and

egalitarianism as fundam ental attributes of the revolutionary agenda w as that i t

generated the expectation that it was the sons of France w ho had to enrol in the

defenc e of the revolutionary nation. The highest sacrifice for the fatherland had to

be shared equally. Equality of all citizen-defenders pointed to emancipation

within the political body of the nation. W ar nationalism thus included an element

of political emancipation, of implementing popular sovereignty: if all citizens

were called to arms to defend the fatherland, then clearly they could also demand

to take part in its political decision-making. The result was the concept of the

nation in arms as both an expression of m ilitary necessity and political participa-

tion. Already in 1789 the French revolutionary and army reformer Dubois-.

Cranc had underlined the political consequences behind the nation in arms

when he had declared before the Con stituent Assembly that `daps une nation qui

veut etre Libre, qui est entouree de v oisins puissants, criblee de factions sourde s et

ulcerees, tout citoyen doit etre soldat et tout soldat citoyen, sinon la France est

arrivee au

terme de son an6antissement'.31

The transform ation of the citizen into a soldier, a defender of the revolutionary

nation, the idea that the nation had to p rove its very existence by wa r, had a lasting

impact on French concepts of national identity throughout the long nineteenth

century. Conscript service as both the badge and moral consequ ence of citizenship

becam e a legacy of the French Revolution, and not only for France, but for the

whole of continental Europe. Following the experience of the revolutionary and

Nape oleonic wars, the concept of a nation in arms and the image of a distinct war

nation were regarde d as essential elem ents of the revolutionary legacy and hence

suppressed. Thus after 1815, military and political leaders from the Bourbon

restoration to the end of the Second E mp ire had no faith in the conscript soldier

whom they regarded as a potential revolutionary. On the other hand , the French

people proved m ore than unwilling to accept the rigours of com pulsory military

service. Contemporaries after 1870 regarded both aspects as

essential causes of the

catastrophe exp erienced in 1870. As a consequence tie defeat against Germ any

resulted in a reform of the French military system, once again focusing on and

reviving the concept of a French nation in arms.

3o

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, `Considerations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur la reformation

projetee' (1772), in id.,

Euvres completes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, vol. iii,

(Paris, 1964), 951-1041.

31

`In a nation that wants to be free, that is surrounded by pow erful neighbours, riddled with deaf

and sickening factions, every citizen m ust be a so ldier and every soldier a citizen, otherwise France ha s

arrived at the final stage of its annihilation'; Edmond-Louis-Alexis Dubois-Cranc6, Speech,

Assem blee nat ionale, 12 Dec. 1789, in Th. lung,

LA rm e e e t la revo lu ti o n : Edm o nd- -Lo u i s A lex is

D ub o i s -C rance , m o usqu e ta i re , co ns t i t uan t , co nve n t i o nneb ge ne ra l de d i v i s io n , m in i s t re de la gue r re

1747-1814,

vol. i (Pa ris, 1884) 18-19.


16/29

Nation-States and bars

41

Despite the origins of this concept in the French R evolution, it was the m ilitary

defeat against Prussia/Germany in 1870 which led to the concept of a nation

armee

being put into practice in the form of mass conscription from the 1870s

onwards. However, the period between the defeat of 1870 and the outbreak of the

First world W ar in 1914 re flected the diversity of antagonistic interpretations of

the idea of a national identity shaped by war and guaranteed o nly by a nation in

arms. Republicans who after 1870 identified positively with the revolutionary

legacy turned the concept of the nation in arms into a moral touchstone, a mean s

to measure the moral virtue of republican citizens. In contrast, conservative

opponen ts and critics of the French Rev olution regarded the nation in arms as a

road towards social anarchy and violent disorder generated by armed mobs.

A generation of French military officers who had experienced the humiliating

defeat of 1870 primarily saw the necessity to respond to the superiority of the

Germ an m ilitary mo del. For them the nation a r m e

was a rational instrumen t to

develop mass armies which would be decisive in future mass warfare. This

excluded im plications of political reform . Such a view wa s distinct from the polit-

ical reformers of the Dreyfus era who concentrated on the idea that politically

educated citizen-soldiers would form the army of the future, thus weakening the

influence of the m ilitary hierarchy in French society which, as both the D reyfus

and the Boulanger crises had illustrated, was still very strong. A citizen first, a

soldier only as a necessary consequence, the citizen-soldier would become the

natural guardian of the French republican nation.32

The war of 1870 showed how contemporaries used both civic and ethnic

eleme nts to come to term s with the traumatic events. Ernest Renan openly criti-

cized Germany s focus on ethnic homogeneity, arguing that in contrast to the

French tradition of national self-determination such a concept would not only

lead to a w ar of exterm ination, but also stressing the im possibility of separating

nation-states on the basis of ethnically defined borders:

De

meine qu'une nation legitimiste se fait teacher pour sa dynastie, de

meine

nous sommes

obliges de faire les derniers sacrifices pour q ue c eux q ui etaient nos a nou s par un paste de

vie et de mort

ne

sou ffrent pas violence ...Notre politique, c'est la politiqu e du d roit des

nations ; la vtre, c 'est la polit iqu e des races . . . t s

peu

de pays poss lant un e race

v r a im en t pu r e ,

ne

pent m ener q des guer res d ' ex te rm ina tion , a des guer res

`zoologiqu es' . . . Vous

avez

lev

y

dann

le

m onde le drapeau de la polit ique ethnographiq ue et

azcheologiqu e en place de la politique li bera le ; re

tte politique vous sera fatale.33

32

See Challener,

Theory

46-90.

33

As a legitimist nation is chopped up by its dynasty, so we are obliged to make the final sacrifices

so that those wh o were born to us throu gh a pact of life and death do n ot suffer any violence . .. Our

politics is the politics of the rights of nation; you rs is the po litics of races ... too few co untries with a

truly pure race could only lead to wars of extermination, to zoological wars ... You have raised the

flag of ethnograp hic and archaeological politics in the w orld in the place of liberal politics; these

politics will be fatal for you.' Ernest Renan, Nouv elle lettre a M. Strauss, 15 Sept. 187 1, in id., `La

Reforme intellectuelle et morale de la France' (1871), in id.,

La Reforme intellectuelle et morale (1871),

4th edn..(Paris,1875) ,198-9.


17/29

242

Jrn Leonhard

But Renan w ent further; in the context of war, he argued that a nation could not

only be a political body defined by the p olitical will, but a com mu nity with shared

historical mem ories, and in particular experiences of com mon suffering.

34

In his

Essay

La Guerre

entre

l a France e t 1A l1em agne

he stressed the importance of wars

for any process o f national self-realization.

35

Here the civic ideal of the revolution-

ary nation was overshadowe d by a shared history and collective mem ories:

Une nation

ne

prend d'ordinaire la com plete conscience d'elle-m m e que sous la pression

de Paranger. La. France existait avant Jeanne d Arc

et Charles VI I; cependant c'est sous le

poids de la domination anglaise que le mot de France prend un accent particulier. Un moi,

pour prendre le

langa e

de la philosophie, se

cree toujours en opposition avec im autre

moi. La France fit de la some 1'Allemagne

comme

nation. La plaie avait ete trop visible. Une

nation daps la pleine floraison de son genie et au plus

haut

point de sa force morale avait

6t6 livr6e sans defense un adversaire moms intelligent et moms moral par les

miserables

divisions de ses petits princes, et faute d'un drapeau centra1.36

Nations could not only be the consequence of voluntaristic acts, but were the

result of long-term processes of shared experiences, and of war experiences in

particular.

GERMANY: NATIONAL WARS AND THE

DILEMMA OF NATION-BUILDING

Although Germ any is usually quoted as one of the most prominent exam ples of

the ethnic m odel ofnation-building, stressing the importance of the

Kulturnation

instead of the West European

Staatsnation,

the focus on war experiences reveals

important civic elements as well. Doubtless, the legacy of the anti-Napoleonic

wars stood far ethnic connotations of a shared history and com mo n sacrifices, but

also for man y liberals' hope s to achieve a c onstitutional state after 1813/15.37

34

Ernest Renan,

L a Ref orme intellectuelle et m orale

(1871), 4th edn. (Paris,1875), 202.

35

Ernest Renan, `La Guerre

entre

la France et l'Allemagne', in `Revue des deux

Mondes ,

15 Sept.

187 0, in id., Reforme,

123-66.

36

A nation does not normally come to complete self-consciousness except under the pressure of

the foreigner. France existed before Joan of A rc and C harles VII; nevertheless

it

is under the weight of

English dom ination that the word France took on a particular accent. A self to take the language

of philosophy, is always created in opposition to another self . Thus did France create German y as a

nation. The woun d was too visible. A nation in the fua t flower of its genius and at the highest point of

its moral force was delivered defenceless to an adversary, less intelligent and less moral through the

miserable divisions of its little princes and for the lack o f a central flag.' Ibid. 131-2 .

3 7

See Karen Hagemann,

Mannl icherMuth

und

TeutscheEhre Nation,

M ilitr und Geschlecht zur

Zei t

der A ntinapoleonischen

K riege Preuens

(Paderborn,

2002); for contemporary examples see,

inter

alia,

Ideen und V orsch lge zu e iner, dem

Geis t der

Z ei t gem er, knf t igen S taats

- V erfassung

in

Teutschland

Von

e inem

teutschen Geschf tsmann (n.p.

1814 ); Ernst Moritz Arndt,

U e b e r zuknftige

V e r f a s s u n g e n in Teutschland

(Frankfurt am Main,1814); Friedrich Ancillon,

U e b e r Souvern i t t und

S t a a t s

-

Verfassungen: Ein Versuch zur Berichtigung einiger pol it ischen

Grundbegri f fe

(Berlin,1815), and

Wilhelm

Traugott

Krug, Die Frsten und

die Vlker

in i h r e n g e g e n s e i t i g e n

F o r d e r u n g e n E i n e

poli t ische


18/29

Nation-States and Rears

243

After the d isillusioning experiences d uring the revolution of 1 848-9, events on

the Italian peninsula an d the succe ssful national war against Austria in 1859 led

again to an intensified public debate about the changing character of war.

National war

as a key concep t of these contemporary w ar discourses, in which

especially liberal bourgeois w riters played a very prom inent role, referred to both

hopes for a unified and constitutional nation-state and a radicalized image of the

enemy. In a contemporary definition of the early 1860s it was thus pointed out

that in any national war every pa rt of the opposing people, that is to say not only

the military, was to be regarded as an enemy which had to be defeated in all

circumstances. The concept of an international civil war of all the suppressed

against their oppressors, which has still been dominant in the enlightened

paradigm of war in the later eighteenth century, was replaced by a w ar fought for

the nation, and carried out by a nation in arms. In the words of contemporary

Germ an encyclopedias: `If war shall be fought with the full vigour of the nation,

then it has to originate from the w ill of the nation.' Wars, it seemed , could only be

`fought for great and just, national interests .

38

Karl Mang y, on the other hand,

approached the contemporary conflicts from the perspective of ideological criticism.

He insisted on international and revo lutionary class war as part of the inevitable

and historically necessary class struggle. In contrast, national wars only conc ealed

the true character of social conflicts. Consequently, Marx regarded national war

as the ultimate instrument by which the old bourgeois society tried to rescue

itself. Taking the form of a m erely governm ental swindle (Reg ierungsschwinde l ) , it

only postponed the true character of war which could only be a revolutionary

class war.39

One of the m ost telling contem porary analyses on the relation between a new

type of national war and popular participation is that of Helmut von Moltke.

Undoubtedly one o f the m ost influential makers of m odern m ilitary strategy in

German y, Moltke had been largely responsible for the successful campaigns of the

1860s and early 1870s.

40

He clearly stood in the tradition of Carl von Clausew itz

who at the beginning of the century and against the background of the French

revolutionary w ars, had distinguished be tween traditional cabinet wars and the

Parallele

der

hohen B undesversam m lung

in Frankfurt gewidmet

von

einem V aterlandsfreunde, inclusive

einer Zugabe zu Herrn A nci llon s Schrift ber Souvernitt und Staatsverfassungen

betreffend

(Leipzig, 1816) .

38

Berner, `Krieg,

Kriegsrecht (politisch und vlkerrechtlich) ,

in Johann C aspar Bluntschli and

Carl Brater (eds.),Deu tsches S taatsw rterbuch,

vol. vi (Stuttgart,1861),105, andLobel., 'Krieg', in

Johann Samuel Ersch an d Johann G ottfried Gruber

(eds .) ,A 11 gendeEnclopiid iederW L csenschaften

und K nste (Leipzig, 1 886), 381.

39

Karl Marx, `Der Brgerkrieg in Frankreich ,

in id. and Friedrich Engels, W erke , ed. the

Institut

f r

Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK

der

SED,

39 vols. (Berlin (Ost), 1956-68), vol. xvii

(1962), 361.

40

See Stig

Frster, `Helmuth von Moltke

und das

Problem des industrialisierten Volkskriegs im

19. Jahrhundert ,

in Roland G. Foerster (ed.), Generalfeldmarschall von Moltke

Bedeutung und

Wirkung

(Munich, 1991), 103-15.


19/29

244

rn Leonhard

new c oncept of `absolute wars', which were fought w ith conscript armies. As the

French revolutionary armies demonstrated in the eyes of many contemporaries,

mass mobilization gave ideological motives a new relevance. In theory, these new

wars would be m uch m ore difficult to control by governm ents. Looking back to

the Prussian war against Austria in 1866, Moltke insisted on its character as a

cabinet war, thereby defending the primacy of political and military decision-

making against the paradigm of an uncontrollable people s war. According to

Moltke, the conflict had not been caused by the need to defend Prussia's existence

or with regard to pub lic opinion or the 'peop le's voice', but had been dec ided in

the cabinet as a necessary step in Prussia s interest. It had not been fought for

territorial or material gains, but for an ab stract ideal, for Prussia's power po sition

in Central Europe against Austrian hopes to retain a hegem ony over Germ any.41

In 1880 M oltke applied this primac y of po litical and m ilitary decision-making

to the war of 1870-1. Convinced of the anthropological necessity of wars, he

argued in favou r of short wars in order to prevent the radicalization of warfare , to

achieve a m ore humane warfare. Yet Moltke was well aware of the necessity to

include not only the military to fight a war, but also to mobilize all possible

human, social, and economic resources of a nation, of state and society. This

reflected Clausew itz's notion of `absolute war' without already encom passing the

notion of a future `total war'. Moltke conc luded that the greatest advantage of a

war laid in being a short war. This justified the use of all the enem y's resources,

including its finances, railways, food supplies, and even its prestige.

42

From this

perspective, Moltke regarded the start of the war of 1870 as a success, because the

French armies had been defeated after two months. Only after the new revolu-

tionary regime under

Gambetta had started a guerrilla w ar against the Germ an

troops did the war assume a new, more violent character, and directly affected

larger parts of the French population.

In stark contrast to his belief in the possible maintenance of- political and

military control of war, Moltke, in one of his last speeches in the Re ichstag in May

1890, pointed out that the traditional concep t of cabinet wars had n ow irrevoca-

bly come to an end. He saw them replaced by new peoples wars as they had

developed since 1848. As a fundam ental consequence, the governments' and the

military elites' ability to direct decision-making was no w challenged by new social

interests. Wars were no longer fought on the basis of a political and military

primacy, but seem ed m ore and m ore influenced by social interests, social conflicts,

and public opinion. Whereas the state had been able to channel and limit the

extent of conflicts following the French revolutionary wars, experiences after 1848

demonstrated a possible return of the revolutionary legacy of people s wars.

Consequently Moltke argued that the causes which made peace so difficult to

maintain were no longer princes and governments, but peoples and classes,

41

Helmuth von Moltke, Ober den

angeblichen Kriegsrat in den

Kriegen Knig Wilhelms I.

(1881), in Stumpf (ed.),

Kriegstheo

ri

e 600 .

4 2

Moltke's letter to Johann

K as p a r

Bluntschli, 11 Dec. 1880 , in Stumpf (ed.),

Kriegstheorie

488.


20/29

Nation-States and Tars

45

pointing in particular to the lower classes social interests and their will to use

revolutionary force in order to improve their socio-economic position. Under

these circumstances a short and decisive war seem ed no longer possible. Given the

enormo us arma men ts of all European p owers, a future war was likely to last indef-

initely. A decisive reason for this prospect was the fact that mass co nscription had

transforme d the limited size of earlier armies into nations in arms with virtually

unlimited huma n resources. He anticipated that no power could be totally defeated,

and that consequently peace treaties would only have a tem porary significance.

Mo ltke was convinced that the war of the future would no longer be fought for

territorial gains or power positions, but for the very existence of nations and

nation-states. The future wars w ould transform the com plete social and political

basis of existing nations and of civilization itself. 4 3

Moltke's anylysis seems of pa rticular importance: confronted with the wars against

revolutionary and Na poleonic France, Prussia at the beginning of the century had

introduced universal conscription, and in contrast to the French model exem ptions

had not been allowed.. However, and in contrast to France, Prussia denied any

coupling of conscription and citizenship rights. Moltke observed that the new

tendency towards national and people's wars, which he saw advancing after the con-

flicts of the 1860s and 1870s, would ultimately include the right of political and social

participation of all classes of society and hence question the foundations of the ne w

German Empire of 1871. The w ar discourses of the later nineteenth century hence

anticipated what wo uld become reality only after 1914: a new co ncept of national

service, based upon the co mm on war sacrifices, by which all classes of society, men as

well as women, could dem and to participate equally in a demo cratic society.

BRITAIN: FROM TRADITIONAL ANTI-MILITARISM TO

ETHNIC AND RACIAL BELLIGERENCE

In stark contrast to the continental European cases of France, Germ any, or Italy,

Britain in the second half of the century did not witness a similar debate over

national and people's wars. Whenever these concepts were used, they referred to

other countries than Britain. This points to particular differences between war

experiences and the meaning of the military on the continent and across the

Channe l. Britain's geographical position, without direct neighbours, allowed her to

rely on a relatively small professional army. Even befo re 1914 the planned size of

43

Helmut von Moltke, Speech in the Reichstag, 14 May 1890, in Stumpf (ed.),

Kriegstheorie,

504-6; see also Graf A lfred von Schlieffen, `ber die Millionenheere' (1911), in id., Cannae:

Mit

e ine r A u s w ah l

v o n A u f s tz e n u n d R e d e n

des Feldmarschalls,

ed. Hugo Freiherr von

Freytag

44

See Hew Strachan,

`Militr,

Empire

und C ivil Society.

Grobritannien im

19.

Jahrhundert',

in

Frevert (ed.),

M ilitr,

78-93, and Michael Paris,

W arr ior Nat ion: Imag es of W ar in Br i tish Popular

Cu l tu re , 1850 -200 0 (London, 2000) .


21/29

246

rn Leonhard

the army w as less than a quarter that of most continental armies.

5Furthermore,

large standing armies had always be en regarded a s symbo ls of absolutist despotism.

But in contrast to the continent, where as a con sequence o f the religious wars of

the seventeenth cen tury princes and dynasties had established absolutist rule on the

basis of standing armies, the absolutist experiment had

failed in Britain with the

end of the Stuarts in 1688. The Whig interpretation of these conflicts provided

am ple room for the identification of standing arm ies with absolutist and therefore

un-English politics. Whe n confronted w ith increased and intensified armam ent

programmes and the introduction of mass conscription in other European coun-

tries, discussions in Britain after 1870 did not focus primarily on a co nscript army.

Even Lord Roberts, popular president of the National Service League, did not

demand a mass conscript army but favoured specific military units capable of

defending the British island in case of an invasion.

46

There was no equivalent of

continental experiences which, as in the French revolutionary and Nap oleonic wars

before 1815 and during the conflicts of the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s, had ca talysed

discourses over the changing m eaning and justification of war.

Furtherm ore, and distinct from the idea l of a nation in arms acc ording to which

all groups of society at least in theory should be trained to defend the fatherland,

the British army for a long time was regarded as a microcosm of rural society.

According to this view, officers were recruited from the landed aristocracy and g en-

try, and soldiers represented the u ncorrupted virtues of the non-industrial part of

British society. Traditional interpretations of the British army in the n ineteenth

century have highlighted that it was this constellation w hich prevented any mili-

tary professionalization by adhering to an amateur ideal of gentleman-officers and

peasant-soldiers.

47

But in the light of m ore recent research this interpretation needs

a closer look. In comparison w ith France, Germ any, and Italy, it was not the con-

cept of national war or people's war, such as in 1859-61,1864,1866, and 1870-1,

that dominated cntem porary war discourses in Britain, but the

small wars which

accompanied the expansion of the British Empire. Throughout the long nine-

teenth century _Britain was engaged in more or less constant military actions inn her

colonies, and these war exp eriences we re certainly distinct from the nationa l wars

on the continent between 1 848 and 1871. It was also in this context that the army's

image as a m icrocosm of rural Britain was challenged. The m ilitary crisis which the

British faced in the Boer War seem ed, in the eyes of many c ontemporary observers,

to be the result of social degen eration of officers and soldiers, due to urban ization

and industrialization in the British motherland.

48

On the other hard, the army

45

See Edward M . Spiers, The A rm y and Soc ie ty

(London, 1980).

46

See R J. Q. Adams and Philip P. Poker,

T he C onscription Controv ersy in Great B ritain

1 9 0 0 - 1 9 1 8

(Basingstoke, 1987), 16-18.

47

Strachan, `Militr', 79; see also Ian F. W. Beckett,

Th e A m ateur M ili tary Tradi tion 1 558-1945

(Manchester, 1991).

4 8 See W. E. Caimes,

T h e A b s e n t - M in d e d W a r

(London, 1900); L. S. Am ery, T he T i m e s H i s t o ry o f

t he W a r i n S ou th A f r i c a 189 9-190 2 ,7

vols. (London, 1900 -9); and H. O. A rnold Forster, T h e A r m y

i n 1 906 A Po l i cy and a V ind i ca t i o n

(London, 1906) .


22/29

Nation-States and Tars

47

could present itself as one of the m ost important integrating forces of the Union, as

the Curragh mutiny demonstrated. When in March 1914 officers of the 6th

Cavalry Brigade in Ireland declared that they were not prepared to ma rch to the

north to implement autonom y, Lord Roberts openly supported their position and

demanded the resignation of the chief of the General Sta.ff.49

As a result of colonial small wars not only the political role of the army changed,

but also its social com position, with decreasing num bers of officers recruited from

the landed gentry and aristocracy. The army as a whole becam e more urban and ,

in contrast to the ideal of Scottish and Welsh soldiers, also more English.5

Another imp ortant change oc curred with regard to the liberals ' atti tude towards

army and w ar. W hereas traditionally historians have pointed to the antagonism

between G ladstonian liberalism and its focus on Hom e Rule for Ireland and the

army as a sym bol of the Union under English dom inance, it seems v ital to see that

this relation changed fundamentally in the later nineteenth century. with the

institutionalization of regular police forces, the army was freed from domestic

functions of maintaining law and order. In combination with the heroic and

Christian image of the military in colonial conflicts, the army became the very

symb ol of the British Empire and Britishness.

Given the absence o f large stand-

ing arm ies in Britain herself, the im age of the tru e T o m m y

as the incarnation of

national and Christian values became ever more popular and began to over-

shadow traditional anti-militarism.

5 2

That process h ad started already during the

wars against France before 1815 and was revived during the Crimean war an d the

Indian Mutiny. The civic element ofanti-militarism, derived from the conflicts of

the seventeenth century and so important for the national self-image, became

more and m ore overshadowed by ethnic and racial connotations of the superior

empire-nation. In 1855 Lord Panmure underlined the changing image of the

army: `I trust our present experience will prove to our countrymen that our arm y

must be som ething more than a m ere colonial guard or home po lice; that it must

be the mea ns of maintaining our name abroad and c ausing it to be respected in

peace as well as adm ired and dreaded in war.'

S 3

T h e T i m e s

in 1856 added that `any

hostility which m ay have existed in bygone days towards the arm y has long since

passed aw ay. The red coat of the soldier is honoured througho ut the country. '54

The successful repression of the Indian Mutiny provoked numerous reactions

pointing to Britain's Christian m ission, her pioneering role for c ivilization and its

49

See Ian F. W . Beckett (ed.),

The A rm y and the Curragh Incident 1914 (London, 1986).

50

See Strachan, `M ilitrr', 86; G wyn H arries-Jenkins,

Th e A rm y in V ictorian Socie ty (London,

1977); Alan Ramsay Skelley, The V ictorian A rm y a t Hom e (London, 1977); and H. J. Hanham,

`Religion and Nationality in the Mid-Victorian Army', in M. R. D. Foot (ed.),

W ar and Society

(London, 1973 ), 159-81.

51

See C. E. C allwell,

Sm all W ars: A Tactical Textbook for Im perial Soldiers (London,1896).

52

See O live An derson, The G rowth of Ch ristian M ili tarism in Mid-V ictorian B ritain ,

Eng l i sh

His tor ica l Rev iew

84 (1971), 46-72.

53

Qu oted in C. J. Ba rt lett , Defence and D ip loma cy: B r i ta in and the Grea t Powers 1815-191 4

(Manchester,1993),126.

54

T h e l im e s

22 Oct. 1856 , p. 6.


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248

rn Leonhard

superiority over barbarism. As the

Baptist Magazine

rema rked in 1858: `The tide

of rebellion [has been] turned back by the wisdom and prowess of C hristian men,

by our Lawrences,

Edwardes, M ontgome rys, Freres, and H avelocks . . .God, as i t

were, especially selecting them for this purpose.'55

Whereas continental societies experienced their war ideal in national wars,

fough t by nations in arms in their collective im agination, the British referred to

small wars, in which the army came to represent an imagined empire-nation,

which contained m any ethnic and racial connotations. In contrast to Europe, the

tendency to anticipate a major future war in Europe as a conflict over the existence

of the entire nation was a rather late developm ent in Britain. Only after 1890 and

in the context of the naval race with German y, a possible Germ an invasion led to

hysterical reactions among the British public, much a ggravated by po pular novels.

These invasion panics had their origins in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and

eighteenth centuries when they had focused on Spain and France as the main

political and confessional enemies, a perception that was renewed before 1815

and again during the three anti-French panics of 1848, 1852, and 1859.

56

It was

only after the 1890s that Germany began to replace France as the anticipated

invader of the future. This collective perception increased both the army s and

navy's popularity before 1914. But in contrast to continental countries, it was not

a cult of a nation in arms that characterized this deve lopmen t, but rather a belated

militarization of society, as the numero us param ilitary activities of army an d navy

leagues, boy brigades, and boy scout m ovem ents illustrated.57

The case o f Britain, usually quoted as an examp le for the civic mo del of nation-

building, shows that even wh ere there wa s no cult of a nation in arms, ethnic and

racial connotations played an increasingly important role in contem porary war

experiences. With the reduc ed m eaning of traditional anti-militarism, the spec-

trum of colonial sm all wars offered amp le opportunities to stress the supe riority of

Anglo-Saxon culture, British civilization, and C hristianity over b arbarity.

THE UNITED STATES: REPUBLIC OF VIRTUES OR

COMMUNITY OF SACRIFICE?

In contrast to continental European societies, where the emergence of a

bureaucratic and centralized state depended on financing standing armies, the

United States had not experienced a similar connection between war and the

developm ent of the strong state. The conflict over the North Am erican colonies'

55

B aptist M agazine,

1 (1858), 323 .

56

See Linda Co lley, B ritons: Forging the N ation 17 07-1837

(London, 1992).

57

See Strachan, Militr', 90; Hugh Cunningham,

T he V oluntary Force: A S ocial and Political

His tory 1 859-1 908

(London,197 5); Ian F. W. Beckett,

R if lemen Form : A Study of the Rifle

V olunteer

M o v e m e n t 1 8 5 9 - 1 9 0 8

(Aldershot,1982); and Hew Strachan, History of the C ambridge Univ ersi

ty

Officers Training Corps (Tunbridge Wells, 197 6).


24/29


49

independen ce was not fough t with standing armies but with republican militias.

They combined the democratic principle with that of classical republicanism

according to which a free citizen was the natural defender of the fatherland.58

After the W ars of Independence and until the early 1860s the Un ited States did

not witness military conflicts on a scale which could have necessitated a more

intensified public debate ove r the alternatives of militias or standing arm ies. After

the British-Am erican war of 1812-15 the threat of a foreign invasion had becom e

highly unlikely. Neither was there a n equivalent to the experience of the Euro pean

wars between 1 792 and 1815, nor the national wars in the context of 1848-9 or

the small wars

of the British Empire. This relative lack of belligerent experiences

found its expression in the Mon roe Do ctrine.59

More important was the collective memory of the Wars of Independence

against the British m otherland. Already contempo raries had com m ented on the

surprising fact that the colonists' mainly irregular militias could have defe ated an

experienced British force, consisting of mercenaries from a whole variety of

different European countries. What the contemporary publicist David Ramsay

called a `people s war was in fact a new kind of war in which the democratic

self-organization of an arm y proved successful 6

At the same time, this self-

organization challenged the traditional separation between the military and the

civil sphere, which for the generation of W ashington had been so important.61

In contrast to France, where the public and enthusiastic mobilization of

volunteers in 1792 was soon replaced by the introduction of Carnot s

levee en

masse, justified by references to the ideal of a nation defended by equal state

citizens, the United States did not w itness the same belligerent nationalism w hich

came to characterize so many European societies, as the examples of Fiance after

1792 and Germ any around 1812113 illustrated. The ideological meaning of w ar,

its significance for the definition of national identity, as a rev olutionary mission or

in defence against an expansionist enemy, was missing here. The Wars of

Independence, though portrayed

as a `people's war', represented on ly one part of

the American Republic s foundation myth, and other elements such as the

constitution or the charismatic Founding Fathers seemed to have a mu ch greater

significance. The United States experienced the function of w ar as a catalyst and

cause ofnation-building not in the form of a national war betw een states, as

Italy

did in 1848-9, 1859-61, and 1870-1 or Germany between 1864 and 1871, but

in a violent civil war. During fou r years, more than 620,000 m en of the No rth and

the South lost their lives a figure which w as significantly higher than that of all

58

See Stig

Frster, Ein

alternatives Modell? Landstreitkrfte und G esellschaft in den USA

1775-1865 , in Frevert (ed.),

Militr 94-118, and

Jrgen

Heideking, ' People's War or Standing

Army? Die Debatte ber Militrwesen und

Krieg in den Vereinigten Staaten

von Amerika im

Zeitalter der

Franzsischen

Revolution', in Kunisch and M

er

(ed.),

W iedergeburt

131-52.

59

See Reginald C. Stuart,

W ar an d Am er ican Thought : From the Revolut ion to the Monroe Doct r ine

(Kent , Oh. , 1982) .

6

See above, n. 26.

6

e e

Frster,

`Modell , 97, and Angus Calder,

Revo lut ionary Em pi re: The R ise of the

Emp i res f rom the F if teenth Century to the 1780s

(NewYork, 198 1) , 804.


25/29

25

0

jrn Leonhard

Am erican victims of both world wars and the Vietnam w ar taken together. The

new ch aracter of the war nece ssitated not only institutional changes bu t also a new

justification of state ac tion in times of w ar.

Soon after the beginning of the military conflict, the South replaced the still

existing militia system by a regu lar army of 100,000 men, wh ich were recruited

from vo lunteers. Only after a series of catastrophic defeats did the North respond

by a far-reaching reorgan ization of the m ilitary. Against the backdrop of the m ass

of soldiers killed or woun ded in action, the numb ers of volunteers soon declined,

making the introduction of universal conscription necessary, which the C onfederate

Cong ress of the South passed in April 1862, soon followed b y similar measure s in

the North. But contrary to the principle of equality of conscription, a complex

system of exem ptions made the Civil War, ih

the words of a con temporary, `a rich

man s war and a poor man s fight .

6 2 mar provided no opportunity to increase

citizens' rights; the suspension of m any rights rather stood for the emergence of an

authoritarian war state.

The N orth justified the wa r by referring to the Southe rn `rebellion', underlin-

ing the defensive character of a war that was m eant to restore and guarantee the

Union. In addition, the religious leitmotif of moral cleansing from the South s

practice of slavery and national restoration through the purgatory of w ax played

an increasingly important role. Wh ereas the N orth relied on the interpretation of

the existing constitution and cou ld therefore justify the Un ion's defence, a distinct

concept ofa So uthern nationality, and not just a particular men tality of the South,

did not exist at the beginning of the war. The Am erican South came to develop a

war nationalism w hich had not existed before. It resulted in Southern culture of

defeat, in which religious images of individual and collective sacrifice and

victimization dominated.

6 3

Racial connotations of the white man a nd his sacrifice

dominated.

Finally the Am erican Civil War anticipated many elements of the later total

wars

of the twentieth century: a hitherto unknow n degree of m ass mob ilization,

which forced the state to instrumentalize a new concept of nation and national-

ity in order to justify hitherto unkn own n um bers of victims; and , at least partly

and temporarily, the end of the traditional separation between the military and

the civil sphere, between the military and the home front. 6 4 Th is radicalization

of war in the name of abstract principles became obvious not only in the

62

J

G. Randall and David Herbert Donald,

The

Civil W ar and R econstruct ion, 2nd edn.

(Lexington, 1969), 251-2; James M. McPherson,

B att le Cry o f Freedom : T he

Civil

W ar Era

(NewYork, 1988), 429-31, and

Frster, `Modell', 115.

63

See Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the

Civi l W ar South

(Baton Roug e, La., 1988), and W olfgang

Schwelbusch, Die

Kultur

der Niederlage:

Der A m erikanische

Sden

1865,

Frankreich

1871, Deutschland 19 18

(Berlin, 2 001).

64

See Mark E. N eely,

W a s

the Civil War a Total War?',

Civi l W ar History, 37 (1991), 5-28; Stig

Frster

a n d

Jrg

Nag ler (eds.),

O n t h e R o a d t o T o t a l W a r T h e A m e r ic a n

Civil War

and the German Tars

of Un i f ica t ion, 1861-1871

(Cam bridge, 1997); Manfred F. Boemeke, Roger Ch ickering, and S tig

rster

(eds.) ,

n t ic i p a tin g T o t a l W a r : T h e G e r m a n

and American Experiences

1871-1914

{Cambridge, 1999).


26/29


51

guerrilla tactics of the South, but even more so in the actions of the Northern

generals Sherman and Sheridan against the Southern population. It was in this

context that the concept of `unconditional surrender was developed. Despite

the United States return to a standing army of just 25,000 men after the Civil

War, it was clear that the traditional militia system had no future in a period of

industrialized warfare. In both the North and the South, governments had

derived fundamental lessons from this experience, and in both cases this went

hand in hand with the emergence of an authoritarian military state and the

suspension of habeas corpus rights, contradicting the self-image of a civic

republic distinct from the European

anciens regimes. 65

On the other hand, the

period of mass conscription did not last long enough to have a more profound

impact on American nation-building. More important was the collective

memory of charismatic war leaders, and in the cases of both Lincoln in the

North and Lee in the South the aura of martyrdom and sacrifice pointed to

dominating religious connotations of national self-images. It was yet another

conflict, the Spanish-American W ar of 1898, which allowed the projection of an

Americairnation unified again by the participation of soldiers of the North and

the South against an external enem y.66

The C ivil-War showed that the initial focus on constitutional arguments in the

No rth, the Un ion's perpetuity as a base for the civic rights of the Repu blic, was

soon replaced by ethnic connotations. Abraham Lincoln stressed the religious

dimension, pointing to the war as God s instrument for the nation s moral

bettermen t. After Lincoln's assassination the president changed into a m artyr of

the nation's republican virtues.

67Howe ver, and as in the case of Rena n, Lincoln

himself underlined not only the model of democratic self-determination and

republican liberty, but also the concept of a national community derived from

shared history and co mm on sacrifices in past wars: `It is for us the living, rather, to

be dedicated here to the unfinished work w hich they who fought here have thus

far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task

remaining before usthat from these honored d ead we take increased devotion to

65

See Richard Franklin Bensel,

Y ankee L ev iathan: T he Origins o f C entral S tate A uthori ty in

A m eri ca, 1859 - 1 87 7

(Cambridge, 1990); and Mark E. Neely Jr.,

T he Fate of L iberty: A braham

L incoln and Civ il Liberties

(New York, 1991) .

66

See Kristin L. Hoganson,

Fighting f or A m erican M anhood: How Gender Politics Provok ed the

Spanish-A m erican and Philippine A m erican w ars

(New Haven, 1998), 107-9.

67

See Erich Angermann,

A braham L incoln and die E rneuerung der nationalen Identi tt der

V ereinigten S taaten v on A m erika

(Munich, 1984); Gabor Boritt (ed.), Th e L incoln Enigm a: Th e

Changing Faces of an A m erican Icon

(Oxford, 2001); for contemporary sources see, inter al

a, Edwin

A. B& Ilkley,

Th e Uncrow ned Nat ion: A Discourse com m em orative of the Death of A braham L incoln,

sixtee nth President of the United S tates, preached in the First Presby terian Ch urch of Plattsburgh, N ew

Y ork (19th A pri l 1865)

(Plattsburgh, 1865), 15; Joseph P. Thompson, Abraham Lincoln: His Life

and its Lessons. A Sermon, Preached on Sabbath (30th April 1865)', Loyal Publication Society No.

85 (New York, 1865 ), in Frank Freidel (ed.),

Un ion Pa m ph l e ts o f t he C iv i l Wa r 1861-1865 ,

vol. ii

(Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 114 9---80, and

T h e M a r t yr s M o n u m e n t : B e i n g t he P a t r io t is m a n d P o l it ic a l

Wisd om o f Ab r a ha m L in c o ln , a s e xh ib ite d i n h is Spe e c he s , Me s sa g e s , O rd e r s , a n d P r oc la m a t ion s

(New York, 1865 ) .


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that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotionthat we here

highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vainthat this nation,

under God , shall have a new b irth of freedom .

6 8

CONCLUSION: NATION-BUILDING, WAR EXPERIENCES,

AND THE LIMITS OF THE CIVIC-ETHNIC MODEL

(1) Typologies and ideal types, as presented above, serve to reduce and to structure

complexity. In the case of the historical phenomenon of nationalism, these

typologies have also provoked and stimulated comparative approaches. Yet

systematic comp arisons also reveal the analytical limits and problems of ma ny of

these normative dichotomies which too often underline a simple antagonism

between W est and East European models. Instead, the com parison reveals a fasci-

nating synchronic diversity and diachronic changea basis from which to

challenge many

Documents

Leonhard Nation States and Wars