Chemeketa Community College
HST 112 World Civilization
Instructor: Mike Balyo

NATIONALISM

Most observers of modern history will agree that "nationalism" was a dynamic and significant political force during the nineteenth-century. Today we take nationalism so much for granted that we forget that nationalism, at least as it exists in the twentieth-century, is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history.

What, after all, is a nation? During the middle ages there was no concept of a nation as we think of a nation today. Medieval nations, or more correctly kingdoms, were not divided nicely according to a common language or culture. Rather, kingdoms were divided according to the land titles of the king or lord. A medieval king might rule territories consisting of vastly different peoples, culturally speaking. A people's allegiance was to their lord, not to their "nation." The only truly unifying force in medieval Europe, to the extent any existed at all, was the Roman Catholic Church. The nation-state simply did not exist.

Medieval kings were also relatively weak. They had to share their power with so many vassals and lesser lords that frequently their power was more symbolic than real. One of the reasons medieval kings had to share their power was that they were short of money. They could not afford, therefore, to maintain standing armies. In order to secure armies of any kind (standing or not standing), they had to give away a great deal of their land (ie. wealth) to their "vassals" in return for military service. Collectively, these vassals became very powerful and wealthy, especially since, in time, their titles and lands were hereditary.

A number of events and forces helped to change all this. One of the significant events that did so was the Protestant Reformation. Of course, this is not what the Protestants had in mind, but by helping to weaken the power and authority of the Catholic Church they created a political environment in which kings could begin to increase their own meager authority and forge strong monarchies. With the Catholic Church out of the way, at least sort of, kings were in a much stronger position politically speaking. Another significant event, or force, that contributed to the develop of modern nationalism was money. To put it more correctly, the increasing acquisition of money by European monarchs. They did this in a number of ways, and we don't have time to review all of them now. Most importantly, however, they found political allies in the the new and growing towns and cities that started popping up all over the place in the late middle ages.

Townsmen, or "burghers" as they were called in Germany, did not care much for land-owning aristocrats who cared little about trade and commerce. Kings, therefore, granted charters (contracts) to the towns, protecting them from feudal obligations and from aristocratic control. The kings did not do this simply because they loved their city folk, however. They expected something in return (don't most politicians?). What they received from the cities was a pool of available recruits for those armies they had always lacked, as well as a tax base with which to equip such an army. Gradually, and to make a long story short, the medieval kings evolved into strong monarchies with big bureaucracies and sizable armies. In Europe this phenomenon, or the end result of it at least, is called "absolutism."

Didn't these "absolute monarchs" create nations? Well, yes and no. For one thing, they were centralized and they did provide a common identity, even in many cases, a common cultural identity. But their "citizens" were not citizens--they were "subjects." It was still true that peoples of varied backgrounds and cultures were often subjects of the same king and therefore part of the same "kingdom." For example, take the wonderful Austrian Empire in 1815. It was ruled by the Hapsburg family, who happened to be German. But within the Austrian Empire you would find impressive numbers of Magyars, Rumanians, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Croats, Ruthenes, Serbs, not to mention Germans.

Or take Germany, After the Congress of Vienna (1815) there were thirty-eight German states, later thirty-nine, each with its own king or prince, its own currency, its own government bureaucrats, and so forth. Germany, in other words, did not exist, at least not politically.

It was a German named Johann Gottried Herder (1744-1803) who helped to get the Germans thinking of themselves not just as Bavarians, Prussians, Saxons, or whatever--but as Germans. His central idea was that of the "volk." The volk, according to Herder, was not simply the people of a country, but a spiritual entity out of which a people's particular culture and customs develop. Literature, music, art, folklore, and religion, for example, are manifestations of the spirit of the people, or the "volkgeist."

Herder's idea of the volkgeist stimulated a significant interest in German myths and legends, folksongs, and even fairy tales. For example, the Grimm brothers collected German fairy tales. The composer Richard Wagner wrote musical dramas that were based on stories from German mythology. What they were hoping to uncover, and to promote, was a common German culture. Even though Germans were not politically united, they could still learn to take pride in their cultural accomplishments. Unfortunately, there was a tendency for cultural nationalism to generate cultural superiority and cultural intolerance, which when combined with racism, was an extremely potent force in nineteenth-century Europe.

Volkish writers in Germany became increasingly intolerant. For example, there was Wilhelm von Riehl (1823-1897), a professor at the University of Munich. Riehl analyzed the different population groups of Germany in terms of the landscapes they inhabited. He believed that the unspoiled German countryside engendered its mostly peasant population with such qualities as sincerity, integrity, and simplicity. The true German spirit, he said, is rooted in nature. Riehl therefore despised urban life and industrialization. The city disrupts the people's oneness with nature. It, in fact, estranges the German people from the German spirit. The peasant who lives close to nature is closest to the German volkgeist. Riehl, and others like him, glorified a rural, primitive civilization because such a civilization was more German.

Wilhelm von Polenz's "The Peasant From Buttner" (1895), is the story of a German peasant who becomes indebted to a Jew. The Jewish creditor has the peasants land foreclosed and sells the property to an industrialist who builds a factory on it. The peasant hangs himself. Polenz's story concludes: "The eyes which were leaving their sockets stared at the soil, the soil to which he had dedicated his life, to which he had sold his body and his soul."

Volkish writers like Polenz depicted Jews as enemies of the German volk, but Polenz is hardly the most extreme example of this thinking. Such a person was Paul de Lagarde (1827-1891), a professor or Oriental languages. De Lagarde viewed the German nation as essentially a spiritual essence--true German are spiritually united by the volkgeist. For Largarde, the Jew is spiritually incompatible with the German spirit. In fact, Jews are aliens living on German soil.

I know this gets monotonous, but we must not forget to mention Julius Langbehn (1851-1907). Langbehn was perhaps the strangest of all the German "volkish" writers. Langbehn was personally influenced by the theosophical writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Theosophy was (and is) the belief in the possibility of receiving messages from disembodied "voices" from the spirit world. Langbehn was the Isaac Newton of volkish thinking . For Langbehn, God, the German spirit (volkgeist), the German landscape, the German people--all were part of the same spiritual essence. A German can only be regenerated (ie, made pure) by means of membership in the Volk. Furthermore, all volkish virtues (physical and spiritual) were transmitted through the blood. When Jews married Germans and they produced children, they polluted the purity of this German inheritance. Langbehn called Jews a "pest and a cholera"which would be the modern equivalent of calling Jews HIV carriers. Jews could never become true Germans.

Not all of the German nationalists were anti-Semitic or even influenced by volkish ideas, but this brand of European nationalism was not a German-only phenomenon. If you studied the history of England, for example, you would find a different sort of cultural nationalism--what I would call "Anglo-Saxonism." What both movements shared in common was a sense of cultural superiority along with a degree of intolerance for people or cultures within their midst that did not fit the cultural ideal.

Many would agree that a nation should consist of a people who share a common history, a common culture, and a common language. What some Germans added to culture (as did some English) in their definition of a nation, was "race." Cultural nationalism , as we have seen, was not always a harmless attempt to learn more about one's own culture.

There was a third brand of nationalism, however. It was not the king-subject brand of nationalism or the cultural brand, but rather what I would describe as a more tolerant, more liberal brand of nationalism that emphasized the people as citizens. This "liberal" view of a nation set forth the idea that a nation could be created as a legal entity and the procedures by which the body politic functioned set forth in a written constitution. The United States was just such a nation.... liberal, secular, less encumbered by tradition.

Whatever brand of nationalism we might investigate, it is useful to remember that nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon in Western culture. It is also helpful to realize how nationalism can, and to some extent has, taken the place of traditional religion in the modern world. Instead of traditional hymns, modern nations have their national anthems. Instead of going on pilgrimage to holy places to view sacred relics, people now frequently travel to national monuments where they can view the sacred relics of their founding fathers. Instead of the Apostles Creed, modern nations offer "pledges of allegiance" to the flag. Instead of holy festivals modern nations celebrate national, secular holidays. Instead of holy scriptures, modern nations have their national histories and their "sacred" documents, such as the Declaration of Independence. The forms of worship for the modern nation can be seen in our parades, our national holidays, our patriotic music, and in fact, every time we salute the national flag. It is perhaps useful to remember that the flag as a symbol of nationhood did not exist in the middle ages. National flags evolved out of the family crests carried and worn by members of the medieval nobility. Once government was a personal and quasi-religious relationship between a king and his subjects. Now it is an impersonal and secular relationship between a nation and its citizens. The question still remains, whether this relatively new arrangement will stand the test of time. Many intellectuals are already debating the feasibility of nationalism in the future. Can nations really solve global problems? There is a strong movement throughout the world for the elimination of nationalism to be replaced by a world confederation of nations. In other words, a world government.