Page 41 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

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domination through the imposition of unequal treaties in a condition for nationalism. But ethnicity, language, and
East Asia) was frequently justified by the allegation that other markers of collectivity were not to become the nat-
colonized societies did not possess the laws and institu- ural basis of claims to sovereignty until the last decades
tions of “civilized nation-states” and were thus not qual- of the century. There may have been earlier, individual
ified to participate in the system. Their resources and cases of ethnicity or other collective markers being used
labor were fair game for colonization and were mobilized as rallying points to mobilize the people, but they were
for capitalist competition. Thus the emerging system of isolated and usually elitist; nationalism as a near-uni-
nation-states was closely associated with imperialism versal phenomenon emerged only in the later period and
abroad. became rapidly realized in the aftermath of World War I.
Within the boundaries of the nation-state in Western
Europe and North America, the nation became associ- The Nation-State
ated with the doctrine of rights for its citizens.The French and Nationalism
Revolution of 1789 protected and enforced human and Several circumstances led to the emergence of mass
individual rights as national rights.Article III of the Dec- nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
laration of the Rights of Man states,“The principle of all centuries. Industrialization necessitated mass literacy and
sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor interchangeable skills, which the philosopher Ernest Gell-
individual may exercise any authority which does not ner (1925–1995) argued required the state to produce a
proceed directly from the nation (or the laws of that culturally homogenous population congruent with state
nation).” In the early stages, the majority of the popula- boundaries.The political scientist Karl Deutsch (1912–
tion, including women, minorities, and slaves within the 1992) noted the importance of modern mass media for
nation, were not granted rights; their rights were won in nation-building projects, and the political scientist Bene-
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through political dict Anderson has emphasized the mass marketing of
and military struggles. But the fact that such struggle for print media in what he calls print capitalism, which
rights became possible at all was due in large part to the described the imagined community of the nation to the
changed foundations of the sovereignty of the state.The reading public. Nationalism was also linked to the poli-
state no longer derived its sovereignty, particularly after tics of mass mobilization that emerged with the increas-
the antimonarchical American and French Revolutions, ing democratization of European polities after 1880.
from religious or dynastic claims, but increasingly from Some of these conditions—such as the mobilization of
the idea of the “people” of the nation.The notion of the certain identities or a form of print capitalism—could be
“nation-people” as the bearers of rights served as a spur found earlier in imperial China and elsewhere. None-
for self-determination and fueled the spread of national theless, it was the simultaneous development of all or
movements in the territories of the Napoleonic, Spanish, most of these conditions within an evolving system of
Hapsburg, Ottoman, and Czarist empires in the nine- competition between states that shaped nationalism at
teenth century. the end of the nineteenth century as the ideology of the
Even so, most of these movements were relatively elit- nation-state.
ist affairs, and nationalism as such did not appear until The relationship between nationalism and competi-
toward the end of the nineteenth century.According to the tion between states was catalyzed by the challenge to
historian Eric Hobsbawm, nationality was not viewed as British global supremacy in the latter part of the nine-
a birthright or an ascriptive status during much of the teenth century. Nationalism became the ideological means
nineteenth century. Patriotism in the eighteenth-century among rising competitor states, such as Germany, Japan,
revolutions in America and France was regarded as a the United States, Russia, and Italy, to mobilize the pop-
largely voluntary affair.To be sure, the territorial nation- ulation and resources within the state’s territory in order
state did produce the cultural homogenization that was to gain competitive advantage globally. Political and cap-