Nations & nationalism. Discuss.
In this essay I will discuss the "nation", but also consider an idea which is intrinsically linked to the concept of a "nation", nationalism. The idea of a nation has been one present in human kind since the first communities; however the prevalence of nationalism exploded in the economic intensity of the Industrial revolution. It was not until the end of the Second World War that this severe philosophy started to abate, replaced by Stalin's warped concept of Communism, the Soviet Union.
A definition of nation must include the presence of unifying factors which bind people to form a distinct community. However by identifying what makes us the same, we highlight what separates us. Whether this is a good thing relies on your views of nationalism. In the last decade nationalism has seen something of a revival, as ethnic strife in the Balkans, parts of Africa and elsewhere, are described in terms of rival nationalities.
Our ideas of a nation are often affected by our view of a country. It does not come naturally to consider a nation containing more than one country. It is not a coincidence that the best example of this occurred during the period of history which contained the greatest increase in nationalistic thought, the 19th Century.
Our idea of what the German nation is, is very different to what the Germany was in the 1800's. It was a patchwork of city-states surrounded by the empires of the Hapsburgs and Prussia. The "Großdeutsches Reich" was what I would ...
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Our ideas of a nation are often affected by our view of a country. It does not come naturally to consider a nation containing more than one country. It is not a coincidence that the best example of this occurred during the period of history which contained the greatest increase in nationalistic thought, the 19th Century.
Our idea of what the German nation is, is very different to what the Germany was in the 1800's. It was a patchwork of city-states surrounded by the empires of the Hapsburgs and Prussia. The "Großdeutsches Reich" was what I would call the German nation, the area of Europe which contained a, nearly, culturally identical people who were united by their language. However, it was not until the 1940's that this "Großdeutsches Reich" was realised. This example highlights the fact that nations are not constrained by political boundaries.
Perhaps the most complex of examples is the Jewish nation. A race to themselves, they are culturally different to any other. With their own languages, alphabets, laws and religion their culture is one of the richest on the planet. However they have migrated across the globe and, until the Holocaust, their numbers were counted in nearly every country in Europe. Despite thousands of years of persecution their nation has survived. Nationalistic sentiment is one of the main reasons for their persecution, they have been kicked out of countries in the interests of "national security", however, nationalism can be said to be one of the driving forces behind their survival. A desire to live in one's own country, with your cultural counterparts is perhaps the purest form of nationalism, one that goes hand-in-hand with our ideas of democracy and freedom.
Isiah Berlin said this, on the subject of international unity; "The 'physiognomies' of cultures are unique: each presents a wonderful exfoliation of human potentialities in its own time and place and environment. We are forbidden to make judgments of comparative value, for that is measuring the incommensurable." A plurality of nations, especially in the modern era, can allow for cultural development and cultural exchange that benefits both parties. Nationalistic feeling protects this cultural diversity and human variation.
However, nationalism also has the ability to empower political movements of the most corrupt and violent kinds. Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, the National Salvation Front of Romania, Communist China and Hitler's Nazi Germany, to name a few, exploit preconceived conceptions and existing senses of nationalism to disguise the fact they mismanage and oppress their countries. They use nationalism as an irrational base of support for their policies. People would do more to change these regimes if they were not clouded by emotionally-charged feelings of nationalism. Nationalism also causes ethnic violence through its narrative of racial superiority. This aspect of nationalism has caused numerous genocides, including but not limited to the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and the atrocities in Rwanda, Japanese violence against the Chinese and the abysmal treatment of the United States' Native American population.
Conversely, nationalism has been a potent force for self-determination in colonial territories. The oft misunderstood Vietnamese independence movement, as well as the majority of African liberation movements of the 40's and 50's relied on the idea of a nation to mobilise their people against a foreign, exploitative power. The same can be said of India and Indonesia, however once independence was achieved, both these countries saw a fracturing of nationalistic ideals which prevents nationalistic impulses from being used to condone violence.
