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Making the Nation

Making the Nation. State Nationalism, Nation-Building and Commemoration. Deepening and Extension of the Nation. After the Risorgimento, a journalist named Massimo D'Azeglio wrote, 'We have Italy, now we must make Italians'. Repeated by Mazzini

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Making the Nation

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  1. Making the Nation State Nationalism, Nation-Building and Commemoration

  2. Deepening and Extension of the Nation • After the Risorgimento, a journalist named Massimo D'Azeglio wrote,'We have Italy, now we must make Italians'. Repeated by Mazzini • Nation-formation 'at the top' is merely the first step on the road to consolidated nationhood • Failure to consolidate the nation can lead to failed states and separatist movements on the periphery (we know all about that today!) • Major extension of nation to the mass of the population in last third of 19th c in Europe

  3. Ethnic Origins and Premodern State Building • Pre-modern 'Ethnie-building' and 'State-building' sometimes comes before modern nation-building • France post-987, England after 9th c, Castile 10th c, Poland, China c. 100 AD, Japan under Tokugawa Shogunate • Kingdoms spread their religion, language, history and identity down the social scale and out to the periphery • Varying degrees of success: i.e. Ottomans converted Bosnians in the towns, but not Bosnians in the hills who remained Serbs • States try and expand their functions, monopolise use of force and tax • But integration in premodernity is always poor – even in 'successful' cases like China and France

  4. The 'Triple-Revolution' of Modernity • Even ethnosymbolists concur that modernity is important • Step-Change in Integration leads to shift from premodern ethnie to modern nation • Smith: 'Triple Revolution' of Modernity Transforms the Ethnie into a Nation: • Bureaucratic incorporation • Capitalism • Cultural Standardisation

  5. Bureaucratic Incorporation • Centralised Military, national military training schools, later conscription • Uniformity of law and authority throughout the territory • Customs, Border control, Post office • 'Reflexivity': Maps, censuses, demographic records • In some countries, an extension of democracy in 20th c

  6. Capitalism • Collection of taxes • Monopolies and customs • Regulation of trade and exchange • State mercantilism • Regular communications: esp. roads, later telegraph and phones, news • Single currency • Laws applying to trade everywhere • 'Single market' • Industrialism encourages labour mobility and breaks down localism and regionalism through migration

  7. Cultural Unification • Single 'official' language of administration (and trade) • Books, newspapers – published in standardised language • National Academies, Galleries, museums, universities from late 18th c • Mass public primary education – 19th c & 20th c • Public ceremonies, festivals and 'national' commemorations

  8. Modernisation and Social Ties • Modernists and Ethnosymbolists agree • The masses 'ushered into history' • Shift from more local orientation to wider social ties • Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft (mass society) • Growth of a 'public sphere', sense of being part of a national entity undergoing daily trials and tribulations • Relayed by common language through better communications and news

  9. The Masses Enter History and the Nation Deepens and Extends • Sense of space and time altered for many local people (Gellner, Anderson, Giddens) • Politicisation of the masses • Linz contrasts State-Building (which began in premodernity) with Nation-Building, a more subjective and cultural process • The nation begins to incorporate the peripheries as modernisation spreads along main roads, rail lines, waterways and then into hinterlands • Communication easier with dialects from similar language family

  10. Peripheries • i.e. Brittany, Scottish Highlands, Basque country, South China or Tibet. Today problem extends to Waziristan or Kurdistan • Regions, especially if rural, had to be incorporated culturally, economically and bureaucratically into the state • Things really only begin to stall in the 1960s: Breton, Corsican nationalist movements, Basque cultural nationalism • What determines the success of the process of nation-building in peripheral regions? • Question: integration and better communications can awaken both local nationalism and state nationalism. Which will win?

  11. Rural France • Rural-urban shift: modernisation and nationalisation occur in step • ''In 1843, an infantry battalion marching through the marshy Landes northeast of Dax discovered..more savages: poor, backward, wild" • "In 1832, Haussmann visited the district of Houeilles in the southwest corner of Lot-et-Garonne, he found no road or landmark, and the highway inspector who guided him had to use a compass" • Talk of 'more civilized nations' between Paris and Loire than south of it

  12. Linguistic Obstacles • 8381 of 37510 communes spoke no French: ¼ of the population • 448328 of 4.018m schoolchildren 7-13 spoke no French: 10% of pop • 1.5m schoolkids understood but could not write: 40% of pop • In 1870, only half the population used French as their active language • Others: Breton, Flemish, Alsatian, Langue d'Oc patois, Basque, Bearnais, Catalan, Gascon

  13. Slow Expansion of Core, 1835-63

  14. Spread of French… • Children caught speaking patois in class were shamed by tokens: ticket, brick, metal objects. Had to be held in class until another was caught • Women and young people educated into French, made a big difference • Education viewed as a ticket out of poverty and backwardness by new generations • Schools doubled between 1833 and 1847, by 1863, only ¼ of 7-13 year olds beyond education

  15. Local Elites • Usually it is local elites that can resist linguistic assimilation and mobilise counter-nationalisms • Prestige of French as literary, expressive and high cultural language • Language of advancement for middle class • Some romantic counterattacks, but too late and disparate among Provencals • More successful for Bretons and Corsicans, Basques and Catalans • Might we have seen a Provencal or Gascon nationalism or are their dialects structurally too close to French? Or is there a lack of distinct political memories?

  16. Other indicators of poor integration • Poor knowledge of history, much less coherent national history • Breton peasants often did not know when events took place – even the Revolution, which they knew of, but as something that happened 'long ago' • Jumbled memory of illiterate societies: survival in words ('Henric-quatre' (Henry IV) – an old worn thing). 'Swede' as a term of wickedness or brigandry (from 30 years' war ravages of Swedes). • No coherent historical narrative • Poor degree of patriotism or willingness to be taxed and serve in military

  17. Patois-Speaking Areas, 3rd Republic

  18. Nation-Building Succeeds to a Large Degree • Fewer fail to understand French • Patois seen as backward by peasants • Peasants want kids schooled in French • French seen as language of learning, modernity, expression by all classes • Attempt to revive Provencal fails, 1859, because masses want to read in French • Mixing of patois (ie Alsatian migrant labourers in Vosges 1870s, or locals moving to towns) leads to gravitating to standard language

  19. Who Assimilates, Who Does not? • Some success in assimilating peripheries: Gascons, Provencals, Flemish, Franche-Comte, also many Bretons, Catalans, Basques, even some Corsicans • Oil dialects in the north succumbs easily due to structural similarity to Parisian French • Flemish seem to offer some resistance, but rapid decline during 20th c; Today, Alsatian in decline • Languedoc offers resistance into 20th c but also declines due to lack of substantial intellectual elite and reading public. Intellectual movements come too late to revive the language • Breton, Corsican, and to some degree Basque and Catalan seem to be better entrenched. Partially linked to more active intellectual class, more isolated position, different language structure from French, different fund of myths and memories

  20. Mass Commemoration • Military Parades, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier • Prussian Kaiserparaden 1876 in honour of emperor, 50,000 onlookers in Leipzig alone • French Bastille Day, 14 July, declared a holiday in 1880 – military parade • Ein Volk in Waffen = Une Nation en Armes • Press reports, simultaneous local festivals

  21. Mass National Festivals • Raising of National Flag • Singing of National Anthem • Monument building: Eiffel 1883 • Public architecture and World's Fairs • Gymnasts, Riflemen, Singers – Germany • Concretises nationalism, no longer an abstraction • Hundreds of Thousands participate

  22. National Commemoration in the Anglo-Saxon World • UK & Commonwealth: Royal Tours • Canada 1901 – more people turn out for Royal Tour in towns than entire population • US – 4th of July (from 1820s), Decoration/Memorial Day from 1868 • 1915-45 heyday in USA

  23. Not a one-way Process • 'Masses' often participate in narrating the nation. Are not passively being moulded • Local associations play a role in coordinating national festivals and commemorations (ie town war memorials) • Regional, local understandings contest and constitute the national identity • Sometimes there is a clash between regional-ethnic interpretations and 'official' national identity (i.e. Basques and Catalans in Spain under Franco)

  24. 'Nationalising' States • Brubaker, Zimmer and Breuilly have noted • Eastern European states more ethnically diverse due to both history and Versailles settlement • Magyarisation in Hungary after 1868, Turkification, Russification • Interwar Eastern and Central Europe • Winners (i.e. Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland) acquired new minorities • Attempt at high-pressure assimilation by the state (ie Poland disqualifies German parents in Upper Silesia from sending kids to German schools, Germans excluded from civil service, strict monolingualism in public life)

  25. Postcolonial 'Nations by Design' • Decolonisation • Power goes to Western-educated State Elites • Independence Struggle may or may not have taken place • Try to Imitate Western European Model • More Ethnically Diverse • Ghana, Congo, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire, Indonesia, Kenya, Iraq, India…. • 'Fathers' of the Nation: Nkrumah, Gandhi, Éboué, Nyerere, Mobutu, Nasser…

  26. Problems of the Postcolonial State • Few premodern traditions of state-building and ethnicity-building • Premodern ethnic traditions often clash with postcolonial state • Low degree of integration, poor communications: • Bureaucratic incorporation?: few roads, little in the way of taxing and spending, lack of military control in peripheries • Capitalism?: societies largely rural in most cases, imperfect standardisation • Cultural Unification?: Official language not widely spoken, mass public culture often fragmented by ethnicity, understandings of history and nation differ by region and ethnic group, poor degree of education and mass literacy

  27. Imperfect State Authority • Unwillingness to pay tax or be conscripted (France – 19th c) • Italy: Guerilla leaders and post-WW1 Fascist squadristi • Contemporary 'failed states' like Iraq, Liberia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Congo.. • Problems of legitimation caused by incomplete nation-building

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