Week 5Inventing Nations
“The modern world has become inconceivable and unintelligible without nations and nationalism.”
–Anthony Smith, “The Origins of Nations” (1989)
A Few (Big) Questions Historians Ask
• What is a nation?• When did modern national consciousness
emerge? How was national identity invented?• What is the relationship between states and
nations?• What accounts for the diverse paths and
outcomes of national movements? • What accounts for the powerful attraction of
nationalism in the modern era?
Orientating Points
• Modern nations and nationalism heirs of French Revolution
• From civic to ethnic conceptions of nation• National movements vs. nationalism• Nation as “imagined community” based on
the “invention of traditions”• National identity never complete
Two models of nation-building
• Western Europe model (early): close parallel between dominant ethnic group and modern state (e.g.., England, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden)
• Central and Eastern Europe model (late): state not coincident with society, minority/ “exogenous” ruling class dominates multiple ethnic groups
Early and Late Nation-Building
Hroch’s Three Phases of Nationalism
• Phase A: scholarly research and literary work help spread historical, linguistic, customary information about ethnic group.
• Phase B: new activism directed at political and social demands, proselytizing among own ethnic group to “awaken” national consciousness
• Phase C: Emergence of mass movement
Cultural sites of nation-building
History and folklore
Language
“High” Culture
Discovering the Volk: The Grimm Brothers fairy tales
Inventing national languages
The artist as national soul: Richard Wagner (1813–1883)
“I am the most German being. I am the German spirit. Question the incomparable magic of my works—compare them with the rest and you can for the time being say no differently than that—it is German! But what is this German? It must be something wonderful, mustn’t it, for it is humanly finer than all else?—Oh heavens! It should have a soil, this German! I should be able to find my people! What a glorious people it ought to become. But to this people only could I belong.”
Liberal nation-building: Italy
Conservative nation-building: Germany
Declaration of German Empire, 1871. Why Versailles?