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Nationalism in World Politics and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrew Ezergailis*
Affiliation:
Ithaca College

Extract

The word nationalism, as it is generally used in the United States by scholars and journalists, is a pejorative term. If by using the term the writer himself does not mean to evoke unfavorable associations, then by necessity he fails because the educated public in America understands the word to be derogatory. The question therefore is seriously to be considered whether the word continues to be serviceable for impartial analyses of world politics and modern history. Many journalists and unfortunately, also many historians and political scientists use the word as nothing other than an elegant expletive to disparage statesmen and countries–foreign and their own. One may suspect that diplomats and men of affairs have already learned to consider the word useless for day-to-day decisions. Unless scholars begin to use the word with more precision and discrimination, they will be forced to follow the example of practical men of affairs.

Type
Problems of Periodization and Terminology in the Histories of Belorussians and Ukrainians
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the Study of Nationalities, 1975 

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References

Notes

1. The pejorative connotations of the word nationalism were already recorded in the 1935 edition of the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences: “… the term nationalism also connotes a tendency to place a particularly excessive, exaggerated and exclusive emphasis on the value of the nation at the expense of other values, which leads to a vain and importunate overestimation of one's own nation and thus to a detraction of others.” Max Hildebert Boehm, Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1935), XI, 231.Google Scholar

2. There are, however, numerous English and continental scholars who have been able to avoid the more obvious biases in their discussions of nationalism to which their counterparts in America seem to be impervious.Google Scholar

3. The rise of communism is perhaps not attributed to nationalism as frequently as the other cases in point. But that seems to be the thrust of Theodore H. von Laue's Why Lenin? Why Stalin? (New York, 1964). Von Laue's position on the question is more clearly articulated in the paper he read at the Northeastern Slavic Conference of the AAASS in Montreal, Quebec, May 5-8. “The Radicalization of Nationalism in Lenin's Thought.” Berdyaev wrote: “It is particularly important for Western minds to understand the national roots of Russian communism and the fact that it was Russian history which determined its limits and shaped its character.” Nicolas Berdyaev, The Origins of Russian Communism (Ann Arbor, 1955), p. 7.Google Scholar

Today it is frequently said that Ho Chi Minh is a nationalist before he is a communist. Intermixture of nationalist slogans with communist slogans is possible, but then the question still remains whether one is typically a nationalist or a communist. After one has made the distinction, then it still remains to ask what difference it makes.Google Scholar

4. Harold R. Isaacs, “Nationalism Revisited.–Group identity and Political Change,” Survey, LXVIII (October 1968), p. 76.Google Scholar

5. “Nationalities are groups of very recent origin and therefore are of the utmost complexity. They defy exact definition.” Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1944), p. 13. In a more recent work Hans Kohn finds the existence of three different types of nationalism: 1. English, American, and Scandinavian; 2. French; 3. German. Prelude to Nation-State (Princeton, N.J., 1967), p. 2.Google Scholar

“There is no easy general rule. Phenomena of utmost complexity and variety, capitalism and socialism, nationalism and imperialism differ in content and consequence with historical circumstances.” Hans Kohn, “A New Look at Nationalism,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, XXXII (Summer 1956), p. 328. Carlton J. H. Hayes in 1931 saw five types of nationalism: humanitarian, Jacobin, traditional, liberal, and integral nationalism. Carlton J. H. Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York, 1931), passim.Google Scholar

In his final summing up in 1960 Hayes chose to emphasize the fluidity and continuity of nationalism. He thought nationalism partook of religious sentiment. Nationalism: A Religion (New York, 1960), p. 6.Google Scholar

“Nationalism is what the nationalists have made it; it is not a neat fixed concept but a varying combination of beliefs and conditions. It may be in part founded on myth, but myths like other errors have a way of perpetuating themselves and becoming not true but real…. Tidy formulas do not fit a sentiment which is itself in the process of becoming.” Boyd C. Shafer, Nationalism. Myth and Reality (New York, 1955), pp. 7 and 11.Google Scholar

Louis Snyder put it this way: “What is nationalism, this most powerful of historical forces? It admits of no simple definitions, since it is a complex phenomenon, often vague and mysterious in character.” Louis L. Snyder, ed., The Dynamics of Nationalism. Readings in Its Meaning and Development (New York, 1964), p. 1.Google Scholar

6. For a discussion of the origins of nationalism, see Louis L. Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism (New Brunswick, N.J., 1954), pp. 74–84. Also Don Luigi Sturzo, Nationalism and Internationalism (New York, 1946), pp. 1–5; Carlton J. H. Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York, 1931); Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background (New York, 1944).Google Scholar

7. Boyd C. Shafer, Nationalism. Myth and Reality (New York, 1955), p. 237.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 227.Google Scholar

9. Louis L. Snyder, The Meaning of Nationalism, p. 75.Google Scholar

10. Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New York, 1926), p. 260.Google Scholar

11. Kohn, Hans, “A New Look at Nationalism,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, XXXII (Summer 1956), p. 332. The internationalist aspect of Hans Kohn's work stands out especially in his The Age of Nationalism (New York, 1962).Google Scholar

12. Arnold J. Toynbee, Change and Habit. The Challenge of Our Time (New York, 1966), p. 108.Google Scholar

13. This is a favorite interpretation of Hayes, Carlton, Generation of Materialism, 1870–1900 (New York, 1941), pp. 196–241. Hannah Arendt, for example, is not very consistent in her treatment of the causes of imperialism, but it is clear that in her view nationalism had much to do with it. H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1958), p. 153. Also see Horace B. Davis, Nationalism and Socialism (New York, 1967).Google Scholar

14. For this we have an expert opinion. Hans Kohn wrote in 1940: “But as a result of the origin of English nationalism every manifestation of the English power, even if at many times brutal and bent upon exploitation, as is all imperialism, has been accompanied by a deep moral undercurrent, fundamentally Christian and liberal, which has been one of the most potent factors in shaping modern civilization. English imperial politics in the nineteenth century was power-politics, but in contrast to German or Russian power-politics of that day, never only power-politics. It seldom wholly lost the demand for and the promise of political and intellectual liberty and equal justice under law, and in its best representatives may always be discerned traces of the Puritan Revolution's enthusiastic hope and anticipation of the establishment of a universal kingdom of God on this earth.” “The Genesis of English Nationalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 1., No. 1 (January 1940), pp. 93–94.Google Scholar

15. Arendt, Hannah, op. cit., p. 153.Google Scholar

16. For a discussion of the causation of imperialism, see E. M. Winslow, The Pattern of Imperialist: A Study in the Theory of Power (New York, 1948); George H. Nadel and Perry Curtis, eds., Imperialism and Colonialism (New York, 1964); Wright, Harrison M., ed., The New Imperialism (Boston, 1961). The most thorough discussion of the concept is to be found in Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt, Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 1840-1960 (Cambridge, 1964).Google Scholar

17. John H. Wuorinen, “Scandinavia and the Rise of Modern National Consciousness,” E. M. Earle, ed., Nationalism and Internationalism (New York, 1950), pp. 453–79.Google Scholar

18. Robert R. Ergang, Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism (New York, 1931).Google Scholar

Giuseppe Mazzini, Life and Writing of Joseph Mazzini (London, 1890).Google Scholar

19. Kurt P. Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika. German Nationalism since 1945, Vols. I and II (Middletown, Connecticut, 1967).Google Scholar

20. Ezergailis, Andrew, “The Nationality Question in Bolshevik Ideology,” Manuscript. Also see Pipes, Richard, The Formation of the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass, 1954), pp. 41–49. A. Meyer, Leninism (New York, 1963), pp. 107–144.Google Scholar

21. For origins of racism see Jacques Barzun, Race: A Study in Superstition (New York, 1965), pp. 34–49. Also see Louis L. Snyder, Race, A History of Modern Ethnic Theories (New York, 1939), pp. 1–29. Both works are limited in scope. They are concerned almost exclusively with Germany and France. The same can be said for Hannah Arendt's treatment of the race problem. Op. cit., pp. 28–53.Google Scholar

22. See chapter 5, “Varieties of Fascism in Eastern Europe,” F. L. Carsten, The Rise of Fascism (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 160–193.Google Scholar

23. Draper, Theodore, “The Ghost of Social-fascism,” Commentary, February, 1969, pp. 29–42.Google Scholar

24. Ezergailis, Andrew, “Anglosaxonism and Fascism,” The Yale Review (Summer 1969), pp. 481–506.Google Scholar

25. Ibid. The best summary statements about the direction in which recent research on fascism is going can be found in “International Fascism 1900–1945,” Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse, eds. Journal of Contemporary History, No. 1 (1966). A new direction has also been charted by David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (New York, 1966) and George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York, 1964).Google Scholar

26. Professor Carsten is somewhat loose in his use of the term nationalism, but otherwise his work substantiates this author's interpretation of the rise of fascism. He writes: “There was no ‘Fascism’ anywhere in Europe before the end of the first world war. Without the slightest doubt, it was this great upheaval, the destruction and the crises resulting from it, and the fear of ‘red’ revolution which arose in many European countries, that brought forth the movement which–after the Italian example–we call ‘Fascist.‘ In comparison with the world after 1918–a world torn by bloody conflicts, political hatred, civil wars, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary convulsions–the world of the years before 1914 was a haven of peace.” Op. cit., p. 9. Also see pp. 230–237.Google Scholar

27. Alexander Solzhenitsin's hero Kostoglotov remembering and reflecting upon his war experiences said: “Those were the best years of my life, incidentally, though that may sound odd.” The Cancer Ward (New York, 1968), p. 257. “And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, and they brought relief because they broke the spell of the dead letter. ”It was felt not only by men in your position, in concentration camps, but by absolutely everyone, at home and at the front, and they all took a deep breath and flung themselves into the furnace of this mortal, liberating struggle with real joy, with rapture.“ Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (New York, 1958), pp. 507–08.Google Scholar

28. Boyd C. Shafer, op. cit.Google Scholar

29. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1964), XXXI, 317.Google Scholar

30. If there is a point to the theory of emergence of nationalism in the Soviet Union, then F. C. Barghoorn has made it. His work, however, is so inconsistent in definitions that the evidence he advances to prove the existence of nationalism in the Soviet Union could also be used against his conclusions. F. C. Barghoorn, Soviet Russian Nationalism (New York, 1956).Google Scholar

31. Perhaps the best discussion of the origin of nationalism is to be found in Eugen Lemberg, Geschichte des Nationalismus in Europa (Stuttgart, 1950), especially see pp. 9–32. In this respect the work of another German scholar, H. L. Koppelmann, Nation, Sprache und Nationalismus (Leiden, 1956) is important. Two French scholars, Guy Michelat and Jean-Pierre Hubert Thomas, have recently attempted to quantity the attitudes of French people towards their nation through the use of questionnaires. The amazing result of this study is that on the questions that touch upon the legitimacy of the French nation there seems to be little difference between the French Left and Right. Dimensions du Nationalisme (Paris, 1966). Otherwise the book, although it purported to put the discussion of nationalism on a completely objective basis, failed to do so because the term nationalism is used very loosely. A work that explores the significance of nationalism in the structure of the modern world is by the English scholar Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870–1940 (London, 1964). One of the author's conclusions is that the decline of the Third Republic is attributable to the decline of French patriotism. Although the work by Thomas Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (New York, 1957) does not add anything new to the solution of theoretical problems of nationalism, it does illustrate the basic absence of alternatives for the statebuilders in the modern world.Google Scholar

32. Works by some English and continental scholars that as yet have not been mentioned in the study, but in which one can find sufficiently unbiased descriptions of the “vessel” are Elie Kedourie's Nationalism (London, 1960); Walter Sulzbach, Imperialismus und National-bewusstsein (Frankfurt, 1959); also Morris Ginsbert, Nationalism. A reappraisal (Leeds University, 1961).Google Scholar

33. The literature that analyses the many pitfalls that historians are heir to is too huge to be enumerated. The works mentioned below are only a very small sample of books that have appeared recently. William H. Dray (ed.), Philosophical Analysis and History (New York, 1966); David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies (New York, 1970; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962); Arthur C. Danto, Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge (Cambridge, 1978); and W. B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (New York, 1964).Google Scholar