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What is a Nation?

Week 7 – Lecture 2

28 February 2008

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Solving the problem of Liberalism:

1) Class

2) Gender

3) Race

4) Normal

5) Nation

NATION

“State”• Max Weber: “A state

is the monopolization of the means of violence.”

– NO• militias; • independent militaries;• nobles warring; • blood feuds; • mobs; • mafias

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“Nation”

1) An imagined community--spread out geographically;

not actual physical contact

2) Based on common birth as what we share most deeply

-- land (USA); blood (Germany)

3) PROMISE: we can live together without confronting difference (in race, class, gender, etc.) because we have this deeper identity

natus” “to be born”

PROMISE of nationalism

• 1) Nationalism is a myth, a promise: desires, yearnings, escapes--- “the mythic projection of our longings for wholeness / togetherness/ unity.”

• 2) Deep national passions.--replacement for feudal loyalty /

blood / religion

• 3) Note peculiar power to move/ mobilize us: power to kill and make worth giving one’s life for.

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PERIL of nationalism• 1) Created with bloodshed

• 2) Sustained by waging wars without and persecuting minorities within

• 3) Unattainable promise: conflict cannot be indefinitely banished from within communities– Internal divisions re-surface: ethnic;

class; religious; geographical/cultural

A. Population Density

[urban v. non-urban]

Does “nation” trump other categories of identity???

B. Total number of voters: both geographical location and population density

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/3d_lowangle.gif

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html

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A. Population Density

[urban v. non-urban]

Does “nation” trump other categories of identity???

B. Total number of voters: both geographical location and population density

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/3d_lowangle.gif

http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html

“Germany”: invented in 1871

• Difficulty: students think of “Germany” as something “natural” or “given”

• Why? hard thinking of alternative sources of identity to “nation-states”

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• 1) EMPIRE: – “Holy Roman Empire”

– “European Union” ?• 2) CITY-STATE

• Florence; Venice

• 3) MONARCHY• “I am a “loyal subject

<feudal vassal> of the King”

• 4) CONFESSION– “Wars of Religion”:

“Protestant” v. “Catholic”

• E.g., “Catholic Spain”; German cuius religio

Think back: other sources of identity

5) TRIBES

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European Tribes [“Barbarians”]

Ironies of Liberal Nationalism

• 1) “Nations” not created from “ground up”; unification achieved from above by force of arms [From Rousseau “social contract” to Bismarck “blood and iron”]

• 2) Results in stronger, not weaker central authority• 3) Shift: from being a “movement on the left” (i.e., Enlightenment Liberalism v.

Feudal Monarchy) to an “instrument of the right” (i.e., Liberalism v. Socialism)

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The function of ideology is to mask origins… and all origins are bloody.

• Nothing “natural” about a “nation”• Formed through bloodshed and coercion• Maintained by memory and imagination• Must hide its foundations / past for it to seem “held together”

II. Historical: Why “nationalism” post-1815?

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A. Material causes

1) Military / Geopolitical:

Napoleonic Wars and the end of the “Holy Roman Empire”

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Brother-in-law: viceroy of Italy

Older brother: King of Naples and Sicily (1806-1808), then King of Spain and the Indies

Younger brother: King of Holland

Other Brother-in-law: King of Naples and Sicily (1808-1815)

Youngest brother, King of Westphalia

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1815: Congress of Vienna: “Restoration”Restoration – like Tom Ripley – Invented Tradition

Will lead to nationalism / ethnicity / nation-states of 1870Revolutions: 1830; 1848; 1870: Liberals v. Progressives

“Simplification of Europe”:

Poland goes out of existence: divided between Prussia, Austria, and Russia

Austria gains territories of Slavic and Italian nationalities

“Prussia” swallows up all other smaller “German”principalities ---turns its eyes toward a “German nation”

“Modernization”: end of clunky old Holy Roman Empire;

streamlined nation-states ……………………………………….

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The International

Organ of the Belgian sectors of the

International Association

of Workers

2) Socialism (Internationalism)

identity from “class,”not “nation”

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers

Arise ye prisoners of want

For reason in revolt now thunders

And at last ends the age of cant.

Away with all your superstitions

Servile masses arise, arise

We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]

And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

“The International” [hymn of the workers]

http://www.funet.fi/pub/culture/russian/html_pages/internatsional.html

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“National-Socialism:

The organized Will of the Nation

B. Political Theory: Liberalism as self-determination

A. An individual has a right to self-determination

B. A “nation” is an individual [i.e., a “people”]

C. Therefore an individual “nation” has a right to self-determination [i.e., a “state”]

Peter Goodspeed, National Post

Tuesday, February 26, 2008Russian presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev and Serbian President Boris Tadic visit an Orthodox cathedral in Belgrade yesterday. “We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its jurisdiction spanning its entire territory, and we will stick to this principled stance in the future,” he said in remarks reported widely on news broadcasts in Russia.

KOSOVO

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C. Intellectual-Cultural:

German Romanticism / Historicism

Themes in German Romanticism

1. Heimat = “homeland” [vs. wandering [cf. Wandering Jew]

Compare: nostalgia = “homesickness”

Contrast Nietzsche: “soil addiction”

2. Volk = “people” / “folk”

cf. primitive innocence

3. Cult of “nature” [Rousseau!]

4. Language more than geography

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WHERE is the German's fatherland?The Prussian land? The Swabian land?

Where Rhine the vine-clad mountain laves?Where skims the gull the Baltic waves?

Ah, no, no, no!His fatherland 's not bounded so!

Where is the German's fatherland?Bavarian land? or Stygian land?

Where sturdy peasants plough the plain?Where mountain-sons bright metal gain?

Ah, no, no, no!His fatherland's not bounded so!

Where is the German's fatherland?The Saxon hills? The Zuyder strand?

Where sweep wild winds the sandy shoresWhere loud the rolling Danube roars?

Ah, no, no, no!His fatherland 's not bounded so!

Where is the German's fatherland?Then name, then name the mighty land!The Austrian land in fight renowned?

The Kaiser's land with honors crowned?Ah, no, no, no!

His fatherland 's not bounded so!Where is the German's fatherland?

Then name, then name the mighty land!The land of Hofer? land of Tell?

This land I know, and love it well;But, no, no, no!

His fatherland 's not bounded so!Where is the German's fatherland?Is his the pieced and parceled landWhere pirate-princes rule? A gemTorn from the empire's diadem?

Ah, no, no, no!Such is no German's fatherland.

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Where is the German's fatherland?Then name, oh, name the mighty land!Wherever is heard the German tongue,And German hymns to God are sung!This is the land, thy Hermann's land;

This, German, is thy fatherland.This is the German's fatherland,

Where faith is in the plighted hand,Where truth lives in each eye of blue,And every heart is staunch and true.

This is the land, the honest land,The honest German's fatherland.

This is the land, the one true land,O God, to aid be thou at hand!

And fire each heart, and nerve each arm,To shield our German homes from harm,

To shield the land, the one true land,One Deutschland and one fatherland!

III. Myths of National Unity / Harmony

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A. TERRITORIAL UNITYOne contiguous territory: resembles organism [cf. Liberalism: self-determination of “individual” i.e., of a “nation”]

Peter Goodspeed, National PostTuesday, February 26, 2008Russian presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev and Serbian President Boris Tadic visit an Orthodox cathedral in Belgrade yesterday. “We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its jurisdiction spanning its entire territory, and we will stick to this principled stance in the future,” he said in remarks reported widely on news broadcasts in Russia.

USA: “Manifest Destiny”: see cyber game!1845: term first used in article on annexation of Texas: belief of a “geographical predestination,” inevitable territorial expansion to the Pacific

Eradication of Native Americans

Manifest destiny? Or the Will to Power?