Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Canto) |
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Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.54
EAN: 9780521439619
ISBN: 0521439612
Label: Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 214
Publication Date: 1992-10-30
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Studio: Cambridge University Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Eric Hobsbawm's brilliant enquiry into the question of nationalism won further acclaim for his 'colossal stature ... his incontrovertible excellence as an historian, and his authoritative and highly readable prose'. Recent events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics have since reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history of political evolution and upheaval. This second edition has been updated in the light of those events, with a final chapter addressing the impact of the dramatic changes that have taken place. It also includes additional maps to illustrate nationalities, languages and political divisions across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Summary: Nations and Nationalism forever.
Comment: According to the book "Nations and Nationalism since 1780" by Professor Hobsbawm, the national feelings of people will fade and, eventually, disappear. Nation-states, the 18th-19th century creation of European cultural elites, will cease to exist. The erudite knowledge and masterful manipulation of historical facts brought in support of the main thesis makes it difficult to defend any opposing viewpoints.
I believe that the nationalities and national feelings, important components of human identity and the driving force of many conflicts, are here to stay. The growth of clans into tribes and their subsequent merger into nations is not an invention of European cultural elites. It is a phenomena as old as written history. The Bible has many pages listing tribes begetting one another. The myths, legends and sagas of Greeks, Slavs and Norsemen are no different. The creators of native alphabets, founders of native schools or national newspapers, collectors of national folklore - in short, the cultural elites ¬- they all brought coherency to the national feelings of people they worked among, but they did not create nations.
The formation and birth of a nation is a natural process. We can think of it as akin to the appearance of new species in the natural world. The perpetual growth and reshuffling of humankind brings about the births of new and disappearance of worn-out nations. The multitude of competitive nations is needed to secure the existence of humanity in the never-ending process of creation. Humankind is advanced through ceaseless competition between different nations.
Professor Hobsbawm believes otherwise. He belongs to a vanishing tribe of Marxists Internationalists. True to Marxist ideology, whose goal is to create a classless and nation-less society, he believes in the eventual disappearance of nations. By Professor Hobsbawm own account (see his biography, Interesting times), the Communist movement was the only "family" he ever truly felt at home with. Marxist ideals shaped the worldview of Professor's Hobsbawm and he remains captive to them. His book is the product Marxist thinking.
As if by mischief, the book front cover bears a reproduction of Breughel's "The Tower of Babel", which contradicts the "nation-less future" thesis of the book. The arrogant builders of the biblical Tower of Babel had to abandon the project punished by God, who, to thwart their plans, confused them by making them speak different languages. The Marxist vision of a class-less future without nations was abandoned too. The Marxist "tower" came crushing down. The front cover impishly symbolizes the futility and arrogance of the Marxist project.
It is a shame so much knowledge and wit of Professor Hobsbawm was spent propagating the ideas of misguided Marxist vision. Be as it may, the sheer amount of facts and stories on nation-building in 19th and 20th centuries makes the book "Nations and Nationalism since 1780" compelling reading for history buffs.
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Summary: Nationalism as a Social Construct
Comment: Hobsbawm takes issues the premise that the "nation" is the genesis of social groups. He writes, "Nations as a natural way of classifying men as an inherent political destiny is a myth" (10). Rather, he contends that a good deal of "social engineering" is involved in the creation of nations and the nation-state. As such, the idea of nations and nationhood is not static, but rather has changed over time. Hobsbawm examines the nature of nationalism, its origin, and its evolution over a number of epochs.
During the revolutionary period, nationalism was based on the common interest of a group of people seeking sovereignty in their political expression. However, as the idea of nation becomes more solidified, issues of heterogeneity may become problematic. Pressures emerge for "the people" to adopt a system of common norms. From this, emerges an idea of unifying citizenship.
Between 1830 and 1880, a number of nation-states emerge, particularly in Europe. In many regards, this emergence was in response to capitalism development. The nation-state "guaranteed the security of property and contracts" and ensured competition (28). Nation-states began to internalize their national economies, "...in any case nation implied national economy and its systematic fostering by the state, which in the 19th century meant protectionism" (29).
Up until about 1880, nationalism and "the nation" was a unifying concept; it brought various groups under one umbrella. After 1880, things began to change. The national sentiments of the common people became politically relevant. Thus we begin to see the rise of proto-nationalism. With the emergence of the modern state (an encompassing, institutionalized government ruling over a particular territory) issues of legitimacy emerged, particularly during modernization. Social structures were changing. Monarchical forms (dynastic lineages, or divine rule) were failing. As such, the state and ruling elites needed to create a "civic religion" or a sense of state-patriotism. Hobsbawm writes that patriotism relates to "the sovereign people" of a territory, regardless of language or ethnicity (86-7). One way state-patriotism is created in through the opening of the political process. Subjects are changed into citizens. As such, the citizens gain a "stake" in their state.
The state and ruling elites can create a concept of state-patriotism based upon commonalities between groups (real or imagined) between various nationalistic groups, thus creating one community. One way this unifying concept emerges is through a sense of protonationalism. Protonationalism refers to the ways in which nationalism is politicized. Holding with his premise that feelings of nationalism are socially constructed, Hobsbawm writes "states and national movements could mobilize certain variants of feelings of collective belonging which already existed and which could operate, as it were, potentially in the more macro-political scale which could fit in with modern states and nations" (46). Protonational bonds include religion, kinship, empire, and a sense of national consciousness.
Hobsbawm also illustrates the dynamism of nationalism in his discussion the emergence of ethnicity and language as requirement for national movements between 1880-1914. Hobsbawm argues that social, political and international changes led to the emergence of ethnic and linguistic nationalism. He contends that traditional groups may feel threatened by the emergence of a strong state and thus mobilize against it. Also, ethnic groups become urbanized which leads to a greater propensity for mobilization. Politically, the move towards democratization leads to the emergence of increasing number of interest groups, often based on ethnicity and language. Additionally, modernization increased the size of the middle class. This middle class felt pressures from both the lower and upper classes. In a bid for protection, the middle class moved towards the political right. In the international environment of the era, many states with imperial designs or national rivalries, welcomed the middle strata. By embracing right-wing causes, the middle class achieves a sense of identity.
The discussion is continued through the interwar years, and continues through the 1950s. Following WWI, the old, unifying nationalism gave way to the still "unredeemed minorities" who were rebelling against the new existing states, i.e. the Basques, Welsh, etc. "What was new was the emergence of such aspirations in nominally national, but actually pluri-national states of western Europe in a political rather than a primarily cultural form" (139). What we see during the interwar period "was the nationalism of established nation-states and their irredenta" (143).
During WWII and the post-war period, many national movements moved towards leftist ideologies, as opposed to the right-wing political movements of the WWI era. This was in part a response to the rise of fascism, and also a move towards decolonization (throw of the chains). In fact, during the war and slightly before it could be argued that a sense of "internationalism" existed. Nations joined forces to fight fascism, colonization, etc.
In regards to nationalism at present, Hobsbawm historically sees a rise and decline trajectory of nationalism's importance. He argues that nationalism at the end of the 20th century is declining in importance. In the Third World, we begin to see a different nationalism than was found in Europe. Hobsbawm argues that this leads to a "general skepticism about the universal applicability of the `national' concept" (152). Third World nationalism was not necessarily based on homogenous ethnicity, etc. When decolonization occurred, groups were "trapped in the state territories drawn by the colonizing powers. This leads to a lot of tension within the state. What we find in these states is not necessarily a move towards self-determination, but rather the groups are bargaining for their share of resources within the state. This is partly the result of modernization. Hobsbawm writes that the "massive and multifarious movements, migrations, and transfers of people [which] undermined the other basic nationalist assumption of territory inhabited essentially be an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically homogenous population" (157).
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Summary: that nationalism is premised largely on myth
Comment: Does not refute its existence. Hobsawm's arguments about the creation of nationalism are quite true, but he takes as his starting point, not the cultures that Nationalism destroyed, but his acultural commiunist world order.
Herein lies his major flaw: first, by refuting nationalism's authenticity, he is justifiying the communist legacy of aggrressive destructiveness towards "national" groups, who might simply be said to be in the throes of a mythologically based false consciousness. In this snese, communism is really a kind of hyper nationalism - Imperialism really - that does to whole nations what nationalists once did to regions.
In this sense, communism is a continuation of the Imperialism of revolutionary Nationalists.
The other major flaw lies in the negation of culturally distinct identities. These do exist, are based largely in geography and are not reinforced and perpetuated by historians over imbued with the spirit of scientific socialism. In this case, Hobsbawm's Marxism is merely a more extreme version of a kind of narrow, intellectualism. Like Spock, he sees anything not based on fact as "invalid".
The fall of communism has led to the assertion of "buried" nationalisms. In refuting those nationalisms, Hobsbawm is accomplishing two major ideological goals: one, he is showing that communism really didn't repress anything and was thus a good thing; second, he is making sordid the disorder that followed its fall by showing that it's all based on lies. While many national identities are, indeed fabricated, they quickly become real. Second, the fall of communism and the rise of the EU have both facilitated the re-emergence of regional identities. This is particularly so in less econoically advanced areas. to name but one example, the Sicilian language persists side by side with the official Italian langauge and remains the first language learned by most Sicilians. Not so with the Northern Italian dialects. Why? Because those areas attract immigrants from all over Italy. They marry, have kids and use Italian as their lingua franca in the home, and their kids grow up wholly ignorant of their parents regional language.
Thus, the Italian nation is real, but more so in the center and North than in the South. Further, it isn't some mythical facade fabricated to prevent the emergence of commmunism. Its emergence has come about for more practicial reasons.
An interesting counter point can be found in Catalonia in Spain. Here, you have a language and culture that deviates from Spain. But, and this is a big fat but, it is an Industrial Area that has brought in many Spainiards. Now, there is enormous pressure to speak Catalan. So you have grandchildren of Spaniards learning Catalan. Eventually, they marry Catalans and Spanish disappears. Fascinating stuff, really. I'm the MASTER!!!!! I dominate at social and historical analysis!!!!!!
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Summary: Often Insightful
Comment: This is a very good overview of nationalism. Following other scholars, notably the pioneering work of Carlton Hayes and Hans Kohn in the 1930s, Hobsbawm point of departure is the fact that nationalism in the modern sense is a recent phenomenon, arising prinicipally in the 19th century and often as the produce of state formation in that era. Hobsbawm covers the history of nationalist ideas from the early 19th century onward, describing the evolution of nationalist ideas from their association with liberal political movements to their later association with the right, indeed, the fascist right. Hobsbawm covers also the basic historiography as well. The primary theme is the social construction of nationalism, often as a state mediated process with developing states using nationalist ideas to increase social cohesion. Hobsbawm also points out how nationalist ideas often arise from confrontation with others, an increasingly common experience as 19th and 20th century Europe saw increasing contact with others from differing ethnicities and religions as the world economy promoted large population movements and novel information about others. Written with Hobsbawm's typical combination of broad erudition and solid prose, this is an engaging and instuctive book.
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Summary: Hobsbawm places nationalism in its historical context
Comment: We ordered this book as a reading for our 'Old Curmudgeons Book Club'. The book club is made up of a small bunch of 'older guys', i.e. in their 50s and 60s. We get together once a month and disucss non-fiction books. We've been doing this for about 15 years now. The book has to have something important to say about the human condition. Since nations and nationalism play such an important role in the 20th and 21st centuries, we thought it important to get a better handle on this. Hobsbawm's book helps us to understand the incredibly short time that nations and nationalisms have played a big role in the human experience. It is essentially a 19th century invention and yet it has become such a part of our thinking - e.g. the notion of the inviolability of national sovereignty, the whole business of being an 'American', Briton, Australian, etc. which is such an important part of self identity. One piece of information I found to be astonishing is the statement that at the time of the founding of modern 'Italy',in the mid 19th century, only 2.5% of the population in the territory now known as Italy spoke Italian. Hobsbawm's book then, helps to put into perspective the whole notion of nation and nationalism and helps us to be a bit more critical and more sceptical (suspicious perhaps) when political leaders appeal in language such as 'My fellow Americans', or 'Canadians believe that...', etc. Oh yeah? (What's America? What's Canada, etc.? It helps us to recall Samuel Johnson's famous and useful phrase 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'. Of course, we can get into debates about the difference between 'nationalism' and 'patriotism' but, for my money, they're pretty much the same thing and both are based on unexamined assumptions. Hobsbawm's book will get you thinking about these issues.
Jim Ward
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