Reassessing nationalism and the building of nation-states in Europe: applying a new theoretical synthesis Chris Bailey The European

nation-states are a comparatively modern development. They first began to appear in the 18th century, starting with Britain in the first half of that century, followed by France after 1789. From the first half of the 19th century, the building of nation-states became a dominant feature of European politics; and nationalism, the ideological and political movement that advocated the building and maintaining of nation-states, grew into one of the most powerful movements in human history. Nation-states emerged initially from a world that had been dominated by very different conceptions from those of nationalism. For more than 1,500 years the Christian ideal of a universal world-state had held sway. The challenge to the domination of the Church of Rome, when it came in the form of the Reformation, did not at first claim to stray from this belief. On the contrary, it sought to restore a single kingdom of god on earth against what it saw as a corrupt clergy who were undermining it. However, the greed of princes and kings, including particularly Henry VIII of England, eventually transformed Protestantism. Seeing an opportunity to rob the church of its wealth they established their independence from it. In doing so they created the conditions that eventually led to the rise of the European nation-states. However, analysing and explaining the emergence of these nation-states has involved major theoretical difficulties that have been the subject of controversy for the last two hundred years. An enormous amount has been written on the subject during that time. Yet no completely adequate theory of nationalism has resulted. This dissertation reconsiders and tries to overcome some of the problems involved. The author believes the difficulties have been largely due to methodological problems within social science itself. He re-examines these problems in the light of important advances in our understanding of nationalism that have been made within the last twenty years in order to develop a new theoretical synthesis. This is then applied to reassessing and re-interpreting the emergence of nationalism and the history of nation building in Europe. What is a nation? At first sight, the basic principle involved in the creation of nation-states seems simple to understand. One of the leading nationalists of the 19th century, Giuseppe Mazzini, defined it as "every nation a state, and only one state for the entire nation".1 Millions of people have fought and died for this doctrine in the last 150 years. However, behind this apparently simple principle, which has provided such powerful motivation, lies a major enigma.

2 What is a nation? Surely, for states to be based upon this concept, it would seem necessary to have a clear understanding of its meaning. During the entire period in which nationalism has prevailed, however, a scientific definition has proved to be impossible. Thus, in 1887, Walter Bagehot, having presented the history of the 19th century as one of "nation-building", then went on to say of the term "nation": "We know what it is when you do not ask us, but we cannot very quickly explain or define it."2 Ninety years later, at the conclusion of the most comprehensive world-wide survey of nationalism ever carried out, Hugh Seton-Watson unhappily concluded: "Thus I am driven to the conclusion that no "scientific definition" of the nation can be devised; yet the phenomenon has existed and exists."3 The question of method This failure to be able to define one of the most important aspects of human development over the last two hundred years raises profound methodological questions concerning the adequacy of social science. Historically, there have been two major attempts to derive a science of human society. The first of these came about through the work of Auguste Comte in the 1830s. Comte developed what he believed was a science of society he called "sociology". The second attempt at a scientific approach to explaining the movement of human society was made approximately ten years after Comte's. It has become known as "historical materialism" and was initially developed independently by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who then worked together in a life long partnership to advance their common theoretical approach. It is proposed to now consider the relevance of these two attempts at social science for deriving a theory concerning the historical development of nation-states. Comte's conception of sociology came out of a wider philosophical position which he called "positive philosophy", but was called "positivism" by its later proponents. Essentially, it was a form of empiricism that believed that the only "scientific" method was induction. According to this viewpoint, all science proceeds through collecting a series of observable facts, looking for common features and then making a hypothesis to explain them. Only theory arrived at in this way is considered valid. Reason and deduction are regarded as defective methods based ultimately on "metaphysics". Comte saw no reason why this method could not be extended to developing a science of society. All that was required was to begin collecting data about any particular social phenomena. When enough facts had been systematically collected, a hypothesis could then be made to generalise and explain them. Comte believed all science proceeded in this way and that simply applying this method to social phenomena would produce his new science of sociology.

3 The majority of attempts at explaining what a nation is have been broadly based on this method of sociology. A list of nations has been compiled and then some common defining feature such as language, culture, etc has been looked for. The work of Hugh Seton-Watson, mentioned above, is a classic example of this. Such attempts to define what a nation is have failed completely. Why? The failure of sociology to explain what a nation is or why nation-states began to come into existence from the 18th century onwards is not due to any errors in the application of the method. Nor is it due to some unique problem concerning nations and nationalism. It is quite simply due to the fact that positivism is flawed as a method and is wrong in its conception of how scientific knowledge proceeds. Because of this, positivist sociology has remained a pseudo-science throughout its existence. It has not been able to proceed beyond collecting and correlating data to providing meaningful scientific explanations for social phenomena. The main flaw in the positivist method was known before Comte first proposed his definition of scientific method. The philosopher David Hume had, in fact, proved the inductive method to be a fallacy a hundred years earlier. Comte's claims to have revealed the only genuine scientific method were, moreover, widely disputed at the time he put them forward. Certainly, Engels went to considerable lengths to contrast the scientific method he and Marx were pursuing to that of Comte. Despite this, positivism dominated the philosophy of science for most of the 20th century. Its final demise in the 1960s was mostly due to the efforts of one person, Karl Popper. Popper campaigned relentlessly from the 1920s onwards against the claims of the positivists to represent scientific method. He was responsible for the most systematic exposure of the flaws in the positivist method, at the same time advancing his own alternative explanation of how scientific knowledge proceeds. For Popper, "induction is a dispensable concept, a myth. It does not exist. There is no such thing."4 and "the belief that we can start with pure observations alone, without anything in the nature of a theory, is absurd".5 Popper admits that theories can sometimes arise through generalisation from observation; considering a number of instances of a phenomenon may provoke a new conjecture to explain it. But the positivists have mistaken a psychological process for a logical one. Perfectly valid theories can also arise through "dreams or dreamlike states; in flashes of inspiration; even as a result of misunderstanding and mistakes".6 In fact, the vast majority of new scientific theories are derived through "modifying already existing theories". Do empirical facts play no role in the development of theory then, according to Popper? Of course they must. But their role is one of refutation, not confirmation. Facts continually prove theories wrong and force a re-examination in the light of the new contradictions revealed. According to Popper, that is how science actually does proceed, not by the route the positivists maintain. As Hume had realised, a million facts confirming a theory do not prove it to be true, but just one fact can prove it to be false.

4 The domination of this false theory of scientific knowledge has undoubtedly been an important factor in the failure to find a scientific explanation for the emergence of nationalism and the nation-state. Important steps forward in deriving a theory of nationalism first began at about the same time as positivism was finally discredited. These developments took place in England where Popper had most influence. In varying degrees all of the theoreticians involved made clear their rejection of positivist methods. One of the most significant, Ernest Gellner, whose theoretical work on nationalism, beginning from his 1964 book Thought and Change, played a pioneering role, openly acknowledged the influence of Popper. Gellner had been a junior colleague of Popper and earlier books by him had been devoted to publicising Popper's views.7 Before examining these more recent developments in theories of nationalism, it is necessary to consider in some depth the other major attempt at a scientific approach to explaining the movement of human society, that of Marx and Engels. Historical materialism In Dialectics of Nature, Engels refuted the inductive method of positivism. He pointed particularly to the revolution Darwin had made in the biological sciences: "It is also characteristic of the thinking capacity of our natural scientists that Hckel fanatically champions induction at the moment when the results of induction - the classifications - are everywhere put in question (Limulus a spider, Ascida a vertebrate or chordate, the Dipnoi, being fishes, in opposition to all original definitions of amphibia) and daily new facts are being discovered which overthrow the entire previous classification by induction. What a beautiful confirmation of Hegel's thesis that the inductive conclusion is essentially a problematic one!"8 Marx and Engels frequently made clear that their intention was to do for social science what Darwin had done for the biological sciences. But what was the nature of the revolution Darwin had made? Engels explained it in terms of an earlier development in another scientific field, that of thermodynamics: "A striking example of how little induction can claim to be the sole or even the predominant form of scientific discovery occurs in thermodynamics: the steam-engine provided the most striking proof that one can impart heat and obtain mechanical motion. 100,000 steam-engines did not prove this more than one, but only more and more forced the physicists into the necessity of explaining it. Sadi Carnot was the first seriously to set about the task. But not by induction. He studied the steam-engine, analysed it, and found that in it the process which mattered does not appear in pure form but is concealed by all sorts of subsidiary processes. He did away with these subsidiary circumstances that have no bearing on the essential process, and constructed an ideal steamengine (or gas engine), which it is true is as little capable of being realised as, for instance, a geometrical line or surface, but in its way performs the same service as these mathematical abstractions: it presents the process in a pure, independent and unadulterated form."9

In contrast to the classification methods of induction, the real basis for science is the abstraction of essential underlying laws of motion from what is merely contingent. Until this has been done, a science can not really be said to exist in a particular field. Thus Darwin developed a theory of evolution in contrast to the mere classifications of Linnaeus, and turned biology into a real science. Marx and Engels set out to do the same for social science against the pseudo-science of sociology. The central hypothesis of the theory of historical materialism is summarised in Marx's preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, written in 1859: "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determine their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins a period of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."10 Elsewhere Marx made clear that "relations of production" involved definite social classes existing in society. Transformations in the relations of production caused changes in the relationship between these social classes. The underlying economic developments therefore expressed themselves through conflict between classes. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."11 Although Marx considered all his writings as an application of these general principles he did not formulate them anywhere more clearly than in the above quotation from his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. There have, however, been problems with understanding exactly what he meant in this passage and this has led to different interpretations. The first four sentences seem clear enough; the problem is in the last four. Perry Anderson, in Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, strongly opposed one widely held interpretation: "For one of the most important conclusions yielded by an examination of the great crash of European feudalism is that - contrary to widely received beliefs among Marxists - the characteristic 'figure' of a crisis in a mode of production is not one in which vigorous (economic) forces of production burst

6 triumphantly through retrograde (social) relations of production, and promptly establish a higher productivity and society on ruins. On the contrary, the forces of production typically tend to stall and recede within the existent relations of production; these then must themselves first be radically changed and reordered before new forces of production can be created and combined for a globally new mode of production. In other words, the relations of production generally change prior to the forces of production in an epoch of transition, and not vice versa."12 In a detailed study of feudal society, Anderson showed that only a small number of technical innovations were responsible for the rise of feudalism. These were: "the use of the iron-plough for tilling, the stiff-harness for equine traction, the water-mill for mechanical power, marling for soil improvement and the threefield system for crop rotation."13 Once feudalism began to emerge, Anderson insists that its further evolution was not due to further technical innovation: "It is in the internal dynamic of the mode of production itself, not the advent of a new technology which was one of its material expressions, that the basic motor of agrarian progress must be sought."14 He advanced an analysis of the "internal dynamic" of feudal society, showing that it relied on constant expansion. According to this, feudalisms eventual crisis and decline arose mainly because certain essential aspects of this dynamic, particularly the continuous reclamation of forestland, were in the end exhausted. If we consider Anderson's interpretation of historical materialism in the context of Marx's description in Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, it does not fare well compared with the "widely received beliefs among Marxists" he attacked. In the next sentence after the quotation given above, Marx wrote about the possibility of determining the "material transformation of the economic conditions of production" brought about by developments in the productive forces "with the precision of natural science" as opposed to the "legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out." It seems clear that the conflict referred to is between the new "forces of production" and the present "relations of production". However, Marx's own voluminous writings on capitalism do not themselves follow this method. In fact, they lend weight to Anderson's view of what the essential method of historical materialism should be. Determining the "material transformation of the economic conditions of production" brought about by changes in the forces of production, as described in Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, would primarily be the work of an economic historian or a writer on the history of technology. Neither of these roles appear as major features of Marx's own work. Although regarding continuous and rapid development of the productive forces as a major aspect of capitalism, he did, in fact, set out to analyse in depth the "internal dynamic" of the capitalist mode of production in much the same way as Anderson has tried to do for feudalism.

Andersons version of historical materialism will be used as the method of approach in this dissertation. Essentially this method arises from the following considerations. Transformations take place in society that ultimately derive from changes in the productive forces. These transformations periodically bring about a change in the mode of production. Each mode of production possesses an internal dynamic of its own that is independent of the will of human beings. A scientific study of society therefore involves attempting to understand this objective dynamic for any given mode of production. It is this that dictates general economic developments and ultimately also determines the dominant ideas in people's heads. "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."15 Proceeding from this method, how then should we approach the problem of explaining the nation-state and nationalism? We need to show that the growth of nation-states arose out of a necessary dynamic of the capitalist mode of production. Nationalism could then be explained as the reflection in the human mind of this independent and objective necessity that could only ultimately be realised through the actions of human beings. One thing immediately tends to confirm this hypothesis. The initial development of the capitalist mode of production took place in Britain and coincided with its emergence as the first nation-state. Capitalism then spread from Britain to Europe and America and was accompanied in both cases by the further growth of nation-states. To proceed beyond this favourable empirical evidence, a theory of the dynamic of capitalism that explains the development of nation-states is required. The obvious place to look for such a theory is in Marx's own writings on capitalism. This turns out to be unhelpful. Nowhere does Marx make any attempt to explain the growth of nation-states and nationalism as part of the dynamic of capitalism. This fact, in itself, requires some consideration. Marx on the nation-state Far from seeing capitalism as causing the growth of nationalism, Marx saw it as leading to its disappearance! This is made clear in The Communist Manifesto of 1848: "National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster"16 This internationalist conception linked to and arising from the continued growth of free trade was central to Marx's whole perspective. He regarded free trade as "the normal condition of modern capitalist production" while protection was "an artificial means of forcibly abbreviating the transition from the medieval to the modern mode of production".17 In 1888 Engels was still standing firmly by this prognosis

8 despite the growing signs that it was clearly wrong. He denounced the now very obvious growth of protectionism in Germany as "absurd" and "ruinous" and claimed the emerging cartels and trusts were "the surest sign" that protectionism was now hampering the further development of capitalism.18 In fact, such cartels and trusts were to be a predominant feature of a still developing capitalism for more than a hundred years! Protectionism means the intervention by the state in the economy. The failure of Marx and Engels to understand the role of protectionism in the development of capitalism was essentially a failure to understand a necessary role of nation-states. To understand the background to this failure we need to consider the general consensus that existed in Marx's time about what a nation was. Marx's writings show that his views on this question were virtually indistinguishable from this consensus. In so far as he had a theory, he merely echoed the viewpoint of Hegel, who had attempted to provide a theoretical foundation for the consensus. Although the concept of a state coinciding with a nation was new in the 19th century, those who advocated it thought they knew what they meant by it. When Mazzini made the call, quoted at the beginning of this dissertation, for every nation to have a state and for there to be one state for each nation, he listed what he regarded as nations.19 A couple of them, the Poles and the Hungarians, might have been slightly controversial at the time, but there would have been common agreement concerning the rest. At this time, the concept of a nation was synonymous with the term people or the German Volk. As early as the 1770s the Encyclopdie had given a list of nations together with their "national characteristics" that coincided fairly closely with most of the nationalities that early 19th century nationalists considered important.20 The list included French, Italians, Spanish, English, Scots, Germans, and Irish. Although there might be some minor disputes over who belonged on the list, people were agreed that there were a number of "historic" nations. Others not belonging to this list were regarded as "people without history", not properly constituting nations. Hegel attempted to define such people as "not bearers of the world spirit". Whereas the "historic" peoples would ultimately crown their history by achieving their own state, for Hegel the highest and ultimate personification of the "world spirit", the "non-historic" people would not be able to and would "count no longer in history". Marx once made a famous claim that in Hegel theory was "standing on its head" and that he had turned it "right side up again".21 Doing so in this case, however, did not produce any more of a scientific definition than Hegel's. Rejecting, of course, the "world spirit", Marx instead simply defined the "historic" people as those he considered capable of forming a state as opposed to the "non-historic" people who he didn't think could. His list of "historic" and "non-historic" nations coincided pretty much with everyone else's. Ephraim Nimni comments in Marxism and Nationalism: "These speculations are perhaps one of the weakest features of Hegel's political philosophy and are certainly in direct opposition to a historical materialist conception of history. It is indeed strange to find this conceptualisation echoed in the works of the founding fathers of historical materialism." 22

Nimni shows that Marx's position on this question often amounted to nothing more than prejudice, sometimes leading to open racism. All that can be said in Marx's favour here is that he was reflecting the general consensus at the time. Similar racism towards "unhistoric" peoples was also to be found amongst most liberals of the time, including John Stuart Mill. 23 Marx's position can be summarised as follows. Certain "historic" nations were capable of forming states of their own and should be supported in their demands to do so. Other "non-historic" peoples should be incorporated into these states, by force if necessary. These states would then begin to progress down the path of capitalist development following, he insisted, the same route Britain had. In all of this, Marx's position differed very little from the views of liberal democracy. He also agreed with the liberal democrats that these states would only flourish through free trade. Only at this point did he diverge. Marx believed the effect of free trade would be to destroy nationalism through internationalising the proletariat, a class that would overthrow capitalism and destroy nationalism in the process of doing so: "The proletarians in all countries have one and the same interest, one and the same enemy, and one and the same struggle. The great mass of proletarians are, by their very nature, free from national prejudices and their whole disposition and movement is essentially humanitarian, anti-nationalist. Only the proletarians can destroy nationality, only the awakening proletariat can bring about fraternisation between the different nations. 24 It is clear that we will not find in Marx's analysis of capitalism an explanation for the growth of nationalism, which was to accelerate greatly after his death, including within the proletariat. His work does not contain any original insight into the emergence of nation-states. Along with most people at the time, he saw this simply as the final realisation of long "historic" developments. He believed these states would soon be demolished by the international movement of the working class anyway. Recent developments in theories of nationalism Before looking further for an explanation of nationalism in terms of the essential dynamic of capitalism, we now need to consider major transformations in theories of nationalism that have taken place within the last twenty years. These have shed new light on the growth of nationalism in the 19th century and challenged previous conceptions about what it represented. The central thesis of the new thinking was stated as early as 1960 by Elie Kedourie in his book Nationalism. Kedourie claimed that national consciousness, even within the so-called "historic" nations, was a recent invention dating from the beginning of the 19th century. He challenged the long held belief that it had developed over hundreds of years. As we have seen, that belief was already prevalent at the time of Marx, and was still dominant at the time Kedourie wrote his book. A typical statement was that of the French historian Marc Bloch:

10 "the texts make it plain that so far as France and Germany were concerned national consciousness was already highly developed about the year 1100".25 In 1964, Ernest Gellner advanced a new theory of nationalism.26 Later, in 1983, he was to develop this theory much further, but already in its early version it lent support to the position Kedourie had advanced. Gellner saw national consciousness as an inevitable product of a modern society that required "cultural homogeneity" if it was to exist at all. He claimed that earlier concepts of a nation or a people were completely different from this, had only existed within very narrow strata of the population, and were irrelevant to the question of nationalism, which was purely a modern development. In 1979, this view received a great boost from the empirical study made by Eugen Weber entitled Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernisation of Rural France, 18701914. Weber showed that the vast majority of rural and small town dwellers in France did not see themselves as "Frenchmen" as recently as 1870, and that many still did not at the time of World War One. His findings were considered particularly amazing because France had previously been thought to be one of the oldest of Europe's 'historic' nations. In the context of Weber's study, Gwyn Williams stated a view that is now widespread amongst theorists of nationalism: "Nations have not existed from Time Immemorial as the warp and woof of human experience. Nations are not born; they are made. Nations do not grow like a tree, they are manufactured. Most of the nations of modern Europe were manufactured during the nineteenth century; people manufactured nations as they did cotton shirts. The processes were intimately linked, as peoples called non-historic invented for themselves a usable past to inform an attainable future, under the twin stimuli of democratic and industrial revolutions."27 This passage is noteworthy on two counts. Firstly, it links nationalism with industrialisation and also the growth of democracy. Secondly, it clearly equates the "historic" and "non-historic" people as both inventing a history to justify their nationhood. Gellner was later to develop this theme of a connection between the growth of nationalism and industrialisation into a comprehensive theory. He was by no means the only one proposing a new theoretical approach to nationalism in this period. The collapse of the old views about the length of time national consciousness had existed opened up a wide ranging discussion. The debate took place mainly in the English language, but involved writers from a number of nationalities. Besides Gellner, particularly notable contributions came from Benedict Anderson and John Breuilly. The second theme raised by Williams, that of invented history, was taken up by Eric Hobsbawm and a number of other historians. In their book The Invention of Tradition published in 1983 they showed how supposedly ancient pageantry, such as that surrounding the British monarchy, was actually an invention of the nineteenth century, and that during that period historians had been engaged in seeking out all

11 kinds of long forgotten events to create histories for nations. Hobsbawm was later to declare that: "historians are to nationalists what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market." 28 The nation-states of Europe, both "historic" and "non-historic", were all manufactured with such designer-made histories. Only after these states had come into existence could they set about creating the nations they had supposedly sprung up from. The poet Massimo d'Azeglio gave the game away for one of the "historic" nations when he declared, after the formation of the Italian state that "We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians." At the time, only 2.5% of the population even spoke Italian. Gellner's theory of nationalism Ernest Gellner's theory has been widely acclaimed as the most convincing explanation of nationalism arising out of the new understanding outlined above. His theory links nationalism to industrialisation. He compared industrial economies with previous predominantly agricultural economies to look for the causes of nationalism. The main difference, as he saw it, was the question of innovation: modern industrial societies involve continuous technical and organisational innovation, whereas earlier societies were essentially technologically static. In pre-modern societies occupational structures changed little. Training could be left to families and guilds and tied to various social and trade rituals. For the bulk of the population there was little need for a universal culture through which to communicate. The various social and occupational groups within society could be almost unintelligible to each other, in effect speaking a different language, often literally. Only at the highest levels of society was there a need for what Gellner called a "high culture" or "idiom" and even here there was great stress on cultural differentiation rather than on homogeneity, reflecting the stratification into segregated military, administrative, clerical and sometimes commercial ruling classes. The needs of modern industrial society contrast sharply with this. Continual innovation means occupational structures change significantly in less than a generation. Training now needs to be in a far more universal idiom requiring communication in context-free concepts. This can only be accomplished by making it a responsibility of society as a whole, requiring the creation of all-embracing education systems. A high culture needs to be extended to the whole population. The state becomes the protector of this high culture or idiom. Here, says Gellner, lies the origin of the nation-state. Anyone excluded from the prevailing idiom for whatever reason or possessing the wrong idiom is cut off from all prospect of a decent life. Faced with a difference between their own idiom and the prevailing one needed for success, people either acquire the latter or see that their children do, or they attempt to force their own idiom into prominence. To be successful this last option requires bringing about a new state protecting the alternative idiom. Thus industrialisation generates nationalism which in turn produces new nation-states. Essentially, each nation-state fosters one and only one idiom.

12 Nations arising from this process may often be constructed in a highly arbitrary way with a great deal of false consciousness about reviving or maintaining folk traditions that never really existed. Sometimes blatant fabrication is involved. Ultimately all that is required is for each state to possess a single idiom that can be continuously reproduced, and sometimes recreated, through the education system. Gellner's theory undoubtedly provides important insights into the growth of nationalism. Critics of the theory, however, have pointed towards his concentration on culture as providing too narrow a foundation to adequately explain all facets of nationalism. In particular, John Breuilly has stressed the political nature of nationalist movements. Whilst acknowledging that this is a one-sided approach, he has shown that it counterbalances Gellners equally one-sided emphasis on culture. A political movement is always required to bring about a society with a new cultural idiom. This movement may be dependent on a number of prevailing social factors besides cultural ones. There have been numerous examples where nationalist or separatist movements arose within what previously appeared to be culturally homogenous populations; and also many examples where quite major cultural differences dissolved without much trace into a single nationalist political movement. Gellner and historical materialism If we consider this dispute, about whether politics or culture should be considered primary, from the theoretical viewpoint of historical materialism defined above, we are bound to reject both positions. This theory sees politics and culture as both being forms in which human beings become aware of an underlying necessity generated by essential economic developments in the mode of production. Gellner devoted a considerable amount of time to opposing such an approach. He stated his objections to historical materialism on a number of occasions. He described his own theory as "materialist, though by no means Marxist".29 For Gellner, nationalism was not the product of the predominant mode of production, capitalism, under which it arose, but of industrialisation. "My own conception of world history is clear and simple: the three great stages of man, the hunting-gathering, the agrarian and the industrial, determine our problems, but not our solution."30 According to Gellner, each of these stages required different patterns of culture and power to function and this was the underlying reality of history: "The genuine reality underlying the historic development seems to me to be a transition between two quite different patterns of relation between culture and power."31 Thus Gellner would appear to be ruling out economic developments as the determining factor of social change. However, he then continues in the next sentence: "Each of these patterns is deeply rooted in the economic bases of the social order, though not in the way specified by Marxism."

13

He then gives a reference to Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List by Roman Szporluk, implying that Szporluk's book shows how nationalism is rooted in economic factors. That certainly is what Szporluk's book tries to do; and therefore its argument seems to run counter to the main theme of Gellner's own theory of nationalism. Yet Gellner confirms his support for Szporluk's position in Encounters with Nationalism, where he devotes a complete chapter to Szporluk's book. Here, Gellner expresses some slight disagreements with Szporluk, but appears to accept the main argument, describing Szporluk's book as "a remarkable study in the history of ideas".32 The theme of the book is of major relevance to the subject matter of this dissertation and will now be examined in some depth. The economics of Friedrich List Szporluk's book is devoted to comparing the theories of Karl Marx with those of his contemporary Friedrich List, the German economist. In doing so it looks at one question in particular. This was summed up by Gellner: "Structural change of human society means, if it means anything, some basic alteration in the relationship of the parts or elements of which mankind is composed. The dramatis personae of history change their positions relative to each other. But who or what exactly are these dramatis personae? There are two principal candidates for the crucial role: classes and nations."33 Marx and List are seen by Szporluk as presenting arguments in favour of the alternative "principal candidates", Marx arguing in favour of classes and List in favour of nations. Marx did, in fact, write an unfinished article against List in 1843 along such lines. After examining the way history has developed since then, Szporluk concludes that Marx has been shown to have been wrong and List correct. It has been nationalism and not the class struggle that has predominated over the last one hundred and fifty years. It is not difficult to see why Gellner rushed to support this view. It would seem to endorse his own position linking nationalism to industrialisation. As Szporluk showed, List's central proposition was that "industrialisation intensified national differences".34 In fact, Gellner was walking into a trap. Having persistently argued against historical materialism and the proposition that economic developments in the mode of production ultimately determined cultural developments, he was now in effect conceding the opposite. List's argument that industrialisation aggravated national differences was expressed entirely in economic terms and arose from his theories concerning the necessary international development of the capitalist mode of production. Even if List was totally correct in his evaluation of the evolution of capitalism compared with that of Marx, this would not prove Marx's theory of historical materialism wrong. On the contrary, if List's economic analysis predicted the political and cultural developments it would actually prove the theory correct. The differences between Marx and List were more complicated than Szporluk and Gellner allow. Certainly, a part of the argument of Marx against List did concern the

14 question of class versus nation. List's arguments were promoting German nationalism and Marx was opposing this with a perspective of working class internationalism. But the actual theoretical attack by Marx on List consisted mainly of a defence of the free trade economic theories of Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Say against List's arguments for protectionism. It is important to understand why Marx was in favour of free trade against protectionism: "We are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economic laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon a greater extent of territory, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions into a single group, where they stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletarians."35 Marx saw protectionism as merely holding up the rapid development of the capitalist system and thus delaying the rise to power of the working class. He accused List of simply rehashing old outdated economic theories that had been used in the past to try to protect agriculture against the development of capitalism. An examination of List's writings show that this is just not true. List stressed his opposition to agricultural protection. His whole emphasis was on the rapid development of industry and the capitalist system. He also made clear something that Szporluk and Gellner ignored completely - he was strongly in favour of free trade in the long term. His translator G A Matile summarised List's position as: "Protection is the means, liberty (free trade) the end".36 List had, in fact, been reluctant to draw the conclusion he did over free trade: "It is after resisting many years this inclination, after having hundreds of times questioned the correctness of opinions and again and again verifying them"37 Nonetheless, he was ultimately sure that he had realised a flaw in the free trade argument.: "I found that the theorists kept always in view mankind and man, never separate nations. It became then obvious to me, that between two advanced countries, a free competition must necessarily be advantageous to both, if they were upon the same level of industrial progress; and that a nation, unhappily far behind as to industry, commerce and navigation and which possessed all the material and moral resources for its development, must above every thing put forth all its strength to sustain a struggle with nations already in advance"38 List maintained this could only be done through state protection of home industrial development. It is in this context that List predicted increased conflict between nations arising from industrialisation. Szporluk saw this as a clear-cut theory of modern nationalism. Gellner disagreed, noting that List's conception of a nation is still essentially the predominant early 19th century one. This is undoubtedly true, but, in providing an economic explanation for the growth of nationalism arising from essential features of the development of the capitalist system, List clearly was pointing to a new form of the nation based on the nation-state.

15 List believed that European nations could not resist an industrialisation process that was driven by their contact with other already industrialised countries. He saw this as having started from the effect on other nations of just one industrialised nation, Britain. Industrialisation went through four stages: "1. Agriculture encouraged by import of manufactured articles and the export of its own products. 2. Manufacture begins to increase at home. Import still continues. 3. Home manufacture mainly supplies domestic consumption and internal markets. 4. Export of manufactured goods and the importation of raw materials and agricultural goods."39 Protection was essential to move up this scale. Only when stage four was reached would it be advantageous to remove tariffs. Their original imposition would be totally justified, he said, because whilst prices would initially be raised, they would eventually become even lower than they had originally been because there would now be increased "internal competition" within stage four countries. He then hinted at a further stage which surely would begin to undermine the nationalism he had predicted would accompany protection. He says, the internal competition then "attracts the productive power of foreign countries, including capital, both material and moral, and skilful masters as well as skilful men"40 Both Szporluk and Gellner saw nations as a permanent feature of industrial society and claim that List supported this view and provided a theoretical argument for why nations, rather than Marx's conception of classes, should be seen as the motive force of history. It seems difficult to sustain their claim, particularly in the light of this last quotation from List. Certainly, List believed that eventual free trade must first be preceded by a prolonged period of what could accurately be described as industrialised nation building accompanied by protectionism. But he does not see this as a permanent development. Although he had obviously not thought it out in any detail, he even seemed to anticipate a further stage beyond free trade in which both capital and labour started to cross national boundaries. It is easy to see why Marx strongly opposed List. He saw List as proposing a strengthening of nationalism when Marx himself believed he was on the eve of international workers revolution. The theories of the free trade economists appeared to justify this view. They pointed towards the immediate and inevitable working out of an irresistible law of value that Marx saw as leading to the growth of an international proletariat, which would challenge the power of capital. In fact, List's theory, predicting a prolonged delay in the working out of the processes that both liberal free trade theory and Marx's own theory saw as immediate, proved to be completely correct. Does this mean that Marx was wrong about the class struggle being the motive force of history, as Szporluk and Gellner claim? Not at all. List's theory of national

16 development did not actually produce a substitute for Marx's theory that history moves through class conflict. The transformation from agricultural to capitalist industrial society could still only take place through a conflict between the classes representing the various interests involved. Certainly, the growth of nation-states predicted by List, accompanied by the greatly increased state intervention involved, would greatly alter the pattern of class developments that Marx had foreseen, but it was a question of class conflicts taking different forms, not of them being abolished altogether. Even at the empirical level, Gellner's claim that nations not classes have proved to be the "dramatis personae" of historical change does not hold water. Nationalism may have been the dominant political movement in the history of the last 150 years, but socialism comes a close second! A theory that only attempts to explain one and not the other is obviously inadequate. Integrating List's economic theories into Marx's theory of historical change is not difficult. It means substituting List's amended theory of the progression to eventual free trade for the original one developed by the classic liberal economists, which Marx had begun from, and then considering the consequences of this change for historical development and class conflict. The resulting synthesis provides an essential correction to Marx's theory of the dynamics of capitalist development. If we also take into account Gellners work concerning the cultural changes that are necessary in moving from a mediaeval to a modern industrial society, and Breuillys insistence that nationalist political movements are essential to bringing about these changes, then we have a viable theoretical basis from which to begin explaining the growth of nationalism and nation-states in Europe. The rest of this dissertation will try to do so from this standpoint.

The 'Age of Absolutism' Feudalism underwent a prolonged 'first crisis' from 1300-1450. In Lineages of the Absolutist State, Perry Anderson analyses how responses to this crisis led to an 'Age of Absolutism' representing an early modern state system. He also shows how this Absolutism took different forms in Western and Eastern Europe. In the West the absolute state was "a compensation for the disappearance of serfdom", while in the East it was "a device for the consolidation of serfdom"41. Jen Szcs in Three Historical Regions of Europe - An Outline, basing himself on Anderson's analysis, shows how the abolition of serfdom and the growing importance of towns for the economy laid the basis in Western Europe for a distinctive development there. As discussed earlier, Anderson's study of feudalism concludes that the crises it went through were due to its need for continuous expansion of the territories under its domination. Eastern Europe (Russia) possessed a much greater potential for such expansion than Western Europe. This difference meant, says Szcs, that "the Western model (of Absolutism) was based on eliminating serfdom, while the Eastern was based on prolonging it. The decisive element in Russian

17 expansion was the agrarian colonization of large areas that offered practically unlimited space for the peasantry's mobility."42 Although Western European feudalism was able to make some expansion into Central-Eastern Europe, it had to compete there with a Russian feudalism that was intrinsically much stronger because of its ability to expand in other directions as well. It was this weakness of West European feudalism that forced it to "create an entirely new model of political and social power"43 "preserving what was preservable from feudalism, preparing for capitalism, and forming the framework of the nation-state system".44 Szcs sees the dynamic of this capitalist nation-state system as later having a profound effect on Russian Absolutism itself, producing there also a form of nationalism. In a process begun by Peter the Great and continuing until the present day (Szcs was writing before 1989): "the Russian Empire was forced to 'open a window' to Europe, give up its own separate 'world economy' and become part of the European economy, and at the same time to make enlightenment a state concern by 'civilising' its subjects in such a way that, in terms of their social character, they still remained subjects (and not 'civiles')".... the result was that a Russian nation was forged from within the Russian 'imperial' framework, just as in the West nations were forged from absolutism. But this concealed a difference as well. Under the Western model national society freed itself from absolutism as the theoretical depositee of sovereignty, so that it could then control the state in practice. Under the Eastern model, the Russian nation remained both in theory and practice a social framework subordinated to the 'freedom of the state' (Marx)."45 Although Szcs analysis raises intriguing questions concerning the post-1989 development of Russia, a study of Russian style nationalism and its own peculiar form of 'nation-state' is beyond the scope of this dissertation. More relevant, however, is Szcs consideration of the effects of competing Eastern and Western forms of Absolutism on Eastern-Central Europe. There Szcs points particularly to the Habsburg dynasty as "marked for almost four centuries by a specific and even ambiguous position between the Western and Eastern prototypes of the developing system of European states. ... It followed that the dissolution of this four-centuries-old hybrid structure was followed by mounting chaos, and not by relaxation. This absolutism was by nature unsuited to making its 'peoples' into modern nations - either clearly defined nation-states or linguistic nations - although in both the West and the East that was one of the fundamental (if unevenly completed) historic tasks of absolutism."46 The particular problems involved in creating nation states in Eastern-Central Europe was also tackled by Gellner in his theoretical work on nationalism and we shall look at this again later, but an examination of West European evolution is essential first. The emergence of capitalism

18

Essentially the restriction of further growth in the area under the control of Western feudalism forced it in the direction of a qualitative rather than quantitative solution to its crisis. If new lands could not come under its cultivation, then there really was ultimately only one other solution to its problems, the raising of productivity in areas already within its domain. This clearly posed the need for a development in the means of production and the eventual creation of a new mode of production. A major feature of the changes that took place in West Europe in response to the crisis of feudalism was devolution of power downwards with certain elements of sovereignty being given to the towns. This produced, says Szcs, a new economic formula that of the autonomous urban economy. It was associated with a growing division of labour and a widening of the market in goods and services. As Adam Smith was to point out later, this in itself encouraged technological innovation.47 David Landes describes West Europe in the Middle Ages as "one of the most inventive societies that history has known".48 He lists a number of key inventions first widely used in this period, the water wheel, eyeglasses, the mechanical clock, printing and gunpowder. Along with this "invention of invention", as Landes calls it, came also geographical exploration. The discovery of America, in particular, opened up major new possibilities for West European development. Thus, in contrast to an Eastern Europe, which had no real need for invention and innovation, Western European society became far more receptive to anything that raised labour productivity or opened up new regions for exploration. However, as Gellner's analysis of nationalism shows, something much more is required to create a universal culture of innovation. Gellner's work contains great insight into the cultural differences between mediaeval society and a modern society geared to "continual innovation". However, as Breuilly's criticism implied, Gellner's work contains a weakness concerning the transformation from one form of society into the other: essentially a political movement is required to make such a cultural changeover. It is precisely this problem that was the central concern of Max Weber in his famous essay, written in 1904-05, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber saw capitalist society as one in which "the external goods of this world have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history"49. Under capitalism human beings strive continuously to maximise their material wealth. Weber concluded that there was nothing natural about such a condition, but that it was produced through certain social and cultural features of capitalist society. By contrast, pre-capitalist societies had not thought in terms of maximising wealth, but rather considered how much work was needed to meet usual needs. "A man does not 'by nature' wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he lives and as he is accustomed to live, and to earn as much as is required to do so."50 Weber claimed that the growth of capitalism could only come about through a "wholly irrational" development. Under capitalism,

19 "Man is dominated by acquisition as the purpose of his life; acquisition is no longer a means to the end of satisfying his material needs. This reversal of what we might call the 'natural' situation, completely senseless from an unprejudiced standpoint, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence."51 The transformation of 'traditional' society into capitalism required a political movement based not on reason or logic, said Weber, but based instead on blind belief - a religious movement. Weber saw the Calvinist branch of Protestantism as having performed this task. Examining particularly the writings of the English 17th century Puritan, Richard Baxter, Weber discovered there, as a product of the doctrine of predestination, a religious belief that saw idleness and time-wasting as major sins "because every hour lost is lost to labour for the glory of God "52. Whilst excessive consumption, "enticement to idle luxury" was frowned upon, the accumulation of wealth was seen as a sign of being one of God's elect, whose soul would be saved from eternal damnation. It is here, said Weber, that we find the origin of capitalist accumulation. Webers essay was intended as a direct challenge to Marxs method of historical materialism. By showing that the political movement that created capitalism preceded the major economic changes involved rather than reflected them Weber believed he had repudiated historical materialism as a theory. We must free ourselves from the view that one can deduce the Reformation, as a historically necessary development, from economic changes.53 Although Webers explanation for the rise of capitalism would disprove the most widely held interpretation of historical materialism, it does not, in fact, contradict the version advanced by Anderson, the one being used in this dissertation. On the contrary, it is saying very much the same thing as Anderson did. Anderson also maintained that the relations of production generally change prior to the forces of production in an epoch of transition, and not vice versa.54 It is true that Webers conception seems to imply that capitalism is the product of an accidental development, whereas Andersons version of historical materialism would imply a causal explanation in which the prolonged crisis of feudalism eventually produced a solution. This is not, however, such a major difference. It mirrors very closely a dispute that has taken place within the biological theory of evolution on whether naturally selected mutations are randomly produced or are caused in some way by the requirements of a given environmental situation. Whether or not Calvinism was actually caused by the crisis of feudalism is not really relevant here. What matters is that by bringing about an accumulation of capital, Calvinism produced new possibilities for the development of human productive forces and thereby provided a way out of the prolonged crisis of West European feudalism. Gods Englishmen The Puritan movement in England produced the most decisive changes of all. It was through its religious and political crusade, culminating in the revolution of 1642-49 and its consequences, that the basis for a capitalist society adapted to continuous innovation of the productive forces was created. According to Gellners theory of

20 nationalism, such changes would need to include the creation of a single cultural idiom, and it is the process of creating one that we should examine to find the emergence of modern nationalism. We do not need to look far. The writings of the Puritan movement are permeated with a completely new conception of an English nation, produced by transferring biblical notions of Gods chosen people from the Israelites to the English and combining this with Calvinist conceptions of Gods elect. Its most eloquent advocate was the Puritans ablest propagandist, John Milton. In a written speech addressed to Parliament he proclaimed: Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her as out of Zion should be sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe? Now once again, by all concurrence of signs and the general instinct of holy and devout men, God is decreeing to begin some new and great reformation in his Church, even to the reforming of the Reformation itself. What does he, then, but reveal himself to his servants, and (as his manner is) first to his Englishmen?55 This speech from Milton was made to persuade Parliament to withdraw a new law against unlicensed printing. It argued for a new relationship between Englishmen and their government, calling for the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience56. The connection between this demand and a new culture of innovation was made very explicit: Consider what nation it is whereof you are governors, a nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.57 This new conception of a nation whose people, as members of that nation, were all Gods elect and therefore entitled to specific rights and liberties guaranteed by government was to reappear in a more secular form in all subsequent nationalist movements. It first showed itself here in the English Puritan movement that established the basis for the first development of capitalism. Nationalism and the construction of nation-states based on a single cultural idiom was an essential feature of the development of capitalism from its beginning. Britain In Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837 Linda Colley shows how the original conception of the English as being God's elect was extended after the Act of Union in 1707 to also include the Welsh and the Scots. It was with this Act that "Great Britain was invented"58. The original reason for this was to ensure that the Scots did not recognise a Catholic, James Edward Stuart as king. The English and the Welsh had already agreed to import a new Protestant dynasty from Hanover. A full legislative union between England, Scotland and Wales seemed the only way to ensure Scottish collaboration with this plan.

21 As Colley says "few pretended at the time or later that a union on paper would automatically forge a united people"59. This unity was created by appealing to a common history and destiny of Protestantism in all its forms in a struggle against Catholicism. The printing press was used to spread this message extensively amongst the whole population of Britain. Of particular note here was John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, containing an account of the sufferings and death of the Protestants in the reign of Queen Mary. First published as a Puritan tract in 1563, it was repackaged and republished in 1732 in short instalments so that "the common people might be also enabled by degrees to procure it"60. This was so successful that further editions were published in 1761 and 1776. It eventually became "one of the few books that one might plausibly expect to find in even a working-class household". The message of the Book of Martyrs and other similar propaganda published at the time, such as John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, was simple: "Protestant Britons learnt that particular kinds of trials, at the hands of particular kinds of enemies, were the necessary fate and the eventual salvation of a chosen people. Suffering and recurrent exposure to danger were a sign of grace; and, if met with fortitude and faith, the indispensable prelude to the victory under God"61 The original Puritan conception of the English as God's chosen people was thus transformed to include all Protestants throughout England, Scotland and Wales. "More than anything else, it was this shared religious allegiance combined with recurrent wars that permitted a sense of British national identity to emerge alongside of, and not necessarily in competition with older, more organic attachments to England, Wales or Scotland, or to county or village. Protestantism was the dominant component of British religious life. Protestantism coloured the way that Britons approached and interpreted their material life. And an uncompromising Protestantism was the foundation on which their state was explicitly and unapologetically based."62 Thus emerged the first real nation-state, "an invented nation, heavily dependent for its raison dtre on a broadly Protestant culture"63. France A central aspect of the forging of the British nation was a series of wars between Britain and France. They were at war between 1689 and 1697 and on a larger scale between 1702 and 1713, 1743 and 1748, 1756 and 1763, 1778 and 1783, 1793 and 1802 and, finally, between 1803 and 1815. These were only the more violent expression of a continuous rivalry. Time and time again, war with France brought Britons, whether they haled from Wales or Scotland or England, into confrontation with an obviously hostile Other and encouraged them to define themselves against it.64

22 As the worlds foremost Catholic power, France personified the enemy that threatened to overthrow Protestantism, the defining feature of the British identity. In all the wars up until the middle of the 18th century, one of Frances main aims was to restore the Stuart Roman Catholic claimants to the English throne and overthrow the Protestant settlement that had been central to the creation of Great Britain. Behind this religious rivalry, however, there was a deeper process taking place that involved important economic and political factors. The Puritan revolution, followed by the constitutional settlement of 1688 and the 1707 Act of Union, had brought about a new type of society in Britain. As discussed above, it had created conditions for a rapid growth of capitalism based on individual innovation and enterprise. Already by the beginning of the 18th century this was having a considerable effect on the overall productivity of the British economy and some French were pointing this out to their own government. Pierre Le Pesant, seigner de Boisguillebert (1656-1714), French magistrate and economist, observed: England does not make the quarter of France, neither in number nor the fertility of its land .Yet England has been able to yield the Prince of Orange for the last three or four years revenues of 80 million livres [say 3 million pounds], and do it without reducing the population to begging or forcing them to abandon their land.65 After 1760, the pace of development of the British economy reached new heights in what became known as the Industrial Revolution. As Friedrich List had observed in the analysis discussed earlier, other European nations could not resist an industrialisation process that was initially driven by their contact with Britain. David Landes observes: The Industrial Revolution in England changed the world and the relations of nations and states to one another. For reasons of power, if not of wealth, the goals and tasks of political economy were transformed. The world was now divided between one front-runner and a highly diverse array of pursuers. It took the quickest of the European follower countries something more than a century to catch up.66 It was France that felt the most immediate effects of the growth in the British economy. Economic strength translates into military strength. With the notable exception of its joint effort with Englands rebel colony in the American War of Independence (1778-83), France came off very much the worse in the series of wars with Britain. At the same time, it suffered military defeats in the East from Prussia, Russia and Austria. The French state sought to reverse these humiliations by building a massive army and a naval fleet to match that of Britain at one and the same time. In the end, this proved to be an impossible task, however, even to attempt it required emulating the industrial development of Britain. French emissaries and spies were sent to Britain to learn British techniques and the French state attempted to encourage industrial enterprise by monopoly privileges, subsidies and tax exemptions.

23 The result was a considerable growth in the French economy. European trade increased fourfold while colonial trade rose tenfold between 1700 and 1789. Accompanying this growth was the development of a dynamic bourgeoisie, growing from 700,000 in 1700 to 2.3 million by 1789. At the same time the demand for legal, medical and administrative services multiplied the members of the liberal professions. Although these developments allowed Frances rate of growth in many sectors of the economy to even surpass that of Britain, there was an inherent contradiction maturing within French society as a result. Britains rapid industrialisation was taking place as a result of the creation of a nation-state politically and culturally adapted to individual innovation and enterprise. The French states importation of similar industrial development was actually building a force that contradicted the structure of French society and stood in opposition to the very state that was encouraging its growth. These contradictions could be seen in the day-to-day operation of the capitalist enterprises that had been created. They constantly came up against restrictions arising from the medieval structures that were an essential feature of a French society still adapted to an absolutist state. Firmly entrenched guilds, sanctioned and defended by the crown, maintained traditional vested interests in trade and manufacture. A complex array of river and road tolls, entrance fees at city gates, etc. interfered with transport and travel. At the same time, the lack of a unified nation-state meant that many regions were subject to their own laws and customs. France at this period represents a suitable case study for Gellners theory that a society based on a medieval culture and social structure cannot support a modern industrial society, and that the transformation to a society based on a single universal high culture adapted to innovation and enterprise is required. These economic and cultural contradictions became strongly reflected within French society. The growth of private capitalist industry brought about the development of a civil society independent of the state. The same thing had already happened in Britain, but in France the conflict between this civil society and the absolutist state became acute. Whilst the Enlightenment developed via a mass of literary and scientific salons, coffee-houses, reading rooms and masonic lodges, where all sorts of ideas could be exchanged, the French state was still strictly censoring the press and imprisoning writers in the Bastille for expressing dangerous thoughts. By the late 1770s, according to Jacques Necker, Louis XVIs finance minister, public opinion had become an invisible power that, without treasury, guard or army, gives its laws to the city, the court and even the palaces of kings67. Along with this growing power of public opinion there arose a conception of a French nation that represented the will of the people. This expressed for the first time a far more advanced and rational notion of nationalism than the Puritan one of a nation of Gods elect had been. In opposition to this conception, addressing the Paris parlement in 1766, an outraged Louis XV sought to restore the claims of Royal absolutism: The entire public order emanates from me. The rights and interests of the nation whom you dare to make a separate body from the monarch rest solely in my hands.68

24

This clash was to be repeated in much sharper form in 1789. Faced with massive debts from the French states military efforts Louis XVI sought new finance by convening a meeting of the Estate General, the first since 1614. Within a short time he was forced to convert it into a National Assembly, representing the nation, very much independent of and in opposition to his own will, which was supposed to represent that of God. From this point, events moved inexorably to the eventual overthrow of the king, and on 21 September 1792 Europes second nation-state emerged as a republic, proclaiming to be one and indivisible, with a constitutional Convention elected by universal male suffrage. The Age of Nationalism The French revolution played a pivotal role in the development of nationalism and the building of nation states in Europe. Ideas emanating from the revolution had a powerful influence on the thinking of wide layers of people throughout the continent. The relationship between la Patrie and les Citoyens expressed in the Marseillaise became central to all future nationalisms. From then on the creation of nation-states was seen as conferring inalienable rights on those (male) citizens who were lucky enough to be accepted into membership of such a state. Enormously influential texts, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 26 August 1789, defined these rights. Demands for individual freedom of speech and assembly and freedom from arbitrary government formed the basis for a mass popular following for a nationalist ideology that challenged from below the absolutist monarchies still dominating Europe. The call of the Paris masses for Death to the Tyrants deeply influenced large sections of the population everywhere in Europe. However, it was not the ideas of the French revolution alone that transformed Europe. In the Revolutionary Wars of 1792-1815 these ideas captured a large proportion of Europe through the guns and bayonets of those who held them. by sweeping aside the entire museum of antiquated state structures in Europe, from the Holy Roman Empire to the Republic of Venice, the revolutionary armies cleared much of the ground for the administrative reforms of the nineteenth century. Again, nationalism was not created whole by the French Revolution; but both the ideology of the nation and the consciousness of nationality was immensely strengthened in all those countries where the old order was overturned.69 Besides inspiring nationalist movements from below, the effects of the Revolutionary Wars began to generate another form of nationalism from above. Whilst the former concerned the fight for freedoms and rights, the latter was often inspired in the first place by questions of military survival. In the English Revolution of 1642, Cromwell had first proved the superiority of a national army based on men who know what it is they do as opposed to the enforced or mercenary armies of absolute monarchs. The French revolution took this to a whole new level. The call of the Marseillaise Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons! was first heard on 21 September 1792 when volunteers, fighting alongside the heavy artillery of the regular army, defeated the Austrian and Prussian armies in the cannonade of Valmy. The German writer Goethe,

25 who was present at the battle, told his colleagues This is the beginning of a new epoch in history, and you can claim to have witnessed it.70 The concept of the Nation in Arms became central to the defence of the revolution from outside intervention. The leve en masse of August 1793 brought three-quarters of a million men under arms and brought the total size of the army and its support services up to one million men. Even in the distorted and opportunist form developed by Napoleon Buonaparte, the superiority of an army built on loyalty to the nation showed its decisive superiority on the battlefields of Europe. Defeat at Napoleons hands provoked military reforms across Europe. The immediate aim of these reforms was to build armies capable of withstanding the French military might. It was soon realised, however, that this could not be done without political reform as well. The Prussian army reforms of 1806-1815 were typical. Baron von Stein, who headed the Prussian government after its military collapse before the French army, summed up the need for political reform following his first audience with Frederick William thus: The chief idea [behind the reforms] was to arouse a moral, religious and patriotic spirit in the nation, to instil into it again courage, confidence, readiness for any sacrifice on behalf of independence from foreigners and for the national honour.71 In his book Armies in Revolution, John Ellis summarises the position: If the reformers had been able to obtain this new national cohesion through rhetoric and tub-thumping they would have gladly limited themselves to that. But they were all too aware of the bankruptcy of the regime seriously to hope that they could make any progress without granting any concrete reforms. If they were to create a new mass commitment to the nation, if they were to make the notion of the fatherland meaningful to its inhabitants, they had to make some effort to create a new constitutional framework which would give the Prussians some vested interest in fighting for its preservation.72 What applied to Prussia applied throughout Europe. Absolutism had proved incapable of mobilising the population in its defence. Even at a military level, the creation of nations in which much wider sections of the population had a stake was becoming essential to survival. The Congress of Vienna settlement of 1815 set out to return the map of Europe to where it had been before the Revolutionary Wars. It made few concessions to nationalism and attempted to restore dynastic principles. But the genie of nationalism, at least in its popular from below version, refused to go back into the bottle. Nationalist movements linked closely with liberalism continued to grow across Europe. They had their finest hour in 1848 when nationalist revolts broke out all over Europe. These were eventually put down. Only tiny Switzerland, where the nationalist revolt had started a year earlier in 1847, managed to emerge with a liberal nationalist constitution. Yet 1848 still represented a turning point. Whilst nationalism from below had failed, nationalism from above was strengthening. Reactionary regimes had

26 defeated the nationalist revolts, but had been shaken by them. As in the case of the military question discussed above, there was now a growing recognition that Absolutism was in an indefensible position. The creation of nation-states from above with citizens loyal to the fatherland began to gain support within even quite conservative forces. Allegiance to the nation was gained by granting many of the demands of the earlier popular nationalist movement as political and social reforms linked to the new nation-states. Underlying these developments was a number of emerging necessities facing the rulers of Europe. Central to these was a dynamic arising from the expansion of industrial capitalism in Britain. In its early stages this had been the driving force that had compelled French Absolutism down the path of the industrialisation that had prepared its own ultimate destruction. After the revolution, French industrialisation grew considerably until by 1848 it could be considered an industrial power, though one still lagging far behind Britain. With the exception of Belgium, which outstripped even France through British investment in the economy, the rest of Europe was far behind in the industrialisation process. It was, however, being forced to go further down the path of industrialisation by British economic development, which now dominated the whole of Europe. All the same issues as had existed earlier in France applied again for the industrialisation of the rest of Europe. The basic political, economic and cultural requirements of an industrial economy remained the same and demanded the building of further nation-states. For much of the 19th century, this process advanced only slowly. The underlying necessity still remained largely hidden. As Lists analysis showed, the first stages of contact between non-industrialised countries and an industrialised one (Britain) would produce benefits for both. The non-industrialised countries would find that demand for agricultural products and raw materials increased and could import manufactured articles in exchange. This is precisely what happened throughout the period from 1848 until 1873. Apart from short depressions in 1857 and 1866, the period was one of continuous and unprecedented economic expansion for most of Europe. Total world trade during this period increased by a staggering 260%. This was the time in which free trade was seen as the key that had opened the door to an era of endless expansion. But List, opposing the majority of economists at the time, saw that what was really happening was a growing domination of Europe by Britain. As Gellner says of this period in Encounters with Nationalism: an international free-trade system, presented and accepted as the work of the Hidden Hand, was acceptable, largely because it engendered prosperity, and partly because the fact that the hand was invisible prevented many from noticing that it was not impersonal but British.73 List believed that only for Britain was the cosmopolitan and the national principle one and the same thing.74 For other countries the immediate future must be one of building nation-states capable of protecting their economies from British domination and allowing them to industrialise. Only after this had happened could a future era of free trade be beneficial to all.

27 The "Great Depression" of 1873 to 1896 showed how prophetic List had been. Until the early 1870s the cost of transporting American wheat to Europe had made its price prohibitive there. Improvements in shipping changed this, and cheap US wheat began to flood the European market. This was a major factor in creating the ensuing slump. The price of grain collapsed throughout the period until by 1894 it was only a third of its 1867 price. This collapse in agricultural prices revealed that the previous free trade period had been one of British domination in which Britain was trying to impose a particular form of world market on everyone else. This would have meant Britain remaining the great manufacturing centre while all other countries were simply suppliers of raw materials and agricultural products. It entailed the subordination of potentially powerful manufacturing economies in their own right to the requirements of British industry. The ultimate economic future of the other European countries, particularly Germany, clearly did not lie in being just food and raw material exporters. The need for them to industrialise now became obvious. In order to do so they had to create nation-states, as Britain and France already had done. From the 1870s there was a rapid acceleration in nation-building and the driving force for this now came very much from above rather than from below. This new nationalism was closely linked to the economic needs of state instigated industrialisation catering initially for strongly protected home markets. Attempts were continuously made to mobilise and harness popular feeling behind this new growth of nationalism, but it was now clearly a much more conservative and right-wing movement than the earlier nationalism, which had been linked with liberal and radical ideology, including free trade. Building a nation The construction of nation-states based on, and guardians of, a single high culture has posed different problems for different parts of Europe. Earlier, reference was made to Jen Szcs consideration of the problem of nation building in Eastern-Central Europe. This area did not come wholly under either Western or Eastern Absolutism, but represented an area where the two contested with each other for power and influence. Szcs maintains that Absolutism, by strongly enforcing a degree of uniformity, laid the basis for the later emergence of nation-states in Western Europe. He says a similar development did not take place in Eastern-Central Europe. If anything, the constant contest between West and East in the area tended to intensify existing cultural divergence rather than reducing it. Szcs refers particularly to the area eventually coming under Habsburg dynastic rule. For perhaps slightly different reasons, this seems to be even truer for the area formerly within the Ottoman Empire. The Habsburgs made some limited attempts to impose a uniform religion and culture on the area within their domain, whereas the Ottoman Empire never did. While suppressing any political opposition, it always tolerated a large measure of religious and cultural autonomy throughout the Empire. Beside maintaining diverse religious and cultural differences, the contest between the various major powers operating in the Eastern-Central European region, often taking the form of open warfare, frequently caused population shifts from one area to another. The overall result was to produce a region that Gellner describes as being

28

an appallingly complex patchwork of diverse cultures, intermixed both geographically and in the social structures, with political, cultural and religious boundaries devoid of any coherence or mutual support.75 Gellner sees this area as presenting the greatest problems from the viewpoint of the implementation of the nationalist principle of one culture, one state.76 Essentially, since there were no single high cultures predominating in this area, both cultures and polities had to be created, an arduous task indeed.77 To a large extent this task still remains uncompleted, long after the building of nation-states has taken place in Western Europe. Gellner also divides Western Europe itself into two parts. The first of these is the Atlantic coast of Europe. Here we had an area which was occupied by strong dynastic states, which roughly, even if only very roughly, correlated with cultural areas. If nationalism requires the marriage of state and culture, then in this zone the couple had been cohabiting long before their union was acclaimed by nationalist Manifest Destiny. History had made a present to nationalism of a broad region where the nationalist imperative was already, at least in considerable measure, satisfied before the event.78 The second area of Europe, further to the east, was different from this. Far from possessing ready-made dynastic states, it was an area of quite exceptional political fragmentation.79 However, if the region lacked pre-existing political units ready for the nationalist requirements, it was exceedingly well equipped with pre-existing, codified, normative High Cultures. Both Italian and German were well codified, ever since the Renaissance and the Reformation respectively, at the latest. The cultural bride was all ready and tarted up at the altar, only the political groom had to be found and his claims made good.80 The building of German and Italian nation-states posed particular problems involving considerable military and diplomatic activity. However, under the growing pressures for nation-state building at the end of the 19th century these problems were overcome. Essentially what took place were unifications brought about by Prussian domination of the German states, excluding Austria, and subordination of the Italian states to rule by Piedmont. Although the building of nation-states has entailed some different problems according to circumstances, the essential features have been the same throughout. The initial

29 task has always been to first establish the new state. As Pilsudski, the first leader of the newly independent state of Poland after 1918, declared: It is the state which makes the nation and not the nation the state."81 In general, new nation-states have at first commanded very little loyalty from the mass of their population. Coercion has invariably played an important role in maintaining the authority of the state in this early period. The aftermath of both the English revolution of 1642-49 and the French revolution of 1789 were marked by considerable terror against local populations to ensure loyalty to the new state. Although in both cases this was ostensibly aimed at remnants of Royalist support, much of it was designed to eliminate local loyalties and replace these with allegiance to the nation. In the later cases of Germany and Italy, with special difficulties as explained above, this stage involved a form of conquest by Prussia and Piedmont over populations owing very little loyalty to them. Coercion requires a force to carry it out, and a central task at this initial stage was to create reliable armed forces devoted to maintaining the new state. Only after this had happened could a much longer process of inventing the nation begin. This relied mainly on propaganda and education: languages were reformed and standardised to prove the nations separate and unique identity; an army of historians looked for obscure events from the past, which were then commemorated by arranging festivals, erecting statues, etc; all branches of art, music and literature were mobilised to discover and embroider folk styles supposedly representing distinctive national schools; novelists were particularly active writing romances about national heroes and national customs. In this way, a single national high culture was created and then taught to the mass of the population via newly established schools and colleges. Anyone excluded from such a high culture was faced with having to create a new one by founding yet another nation-state. In many cases, it was clearly impossible to create a state that would have even the remotest chance of being economically viable. The latter part of the 19th century was dominated by this invention of nations. Only a relative handful established themselves as states, but this still represented a big increase in the number of nation-states. In 1857 Mazzinis list of potential European nations had numbered twelve. At the end of the First World War twenty-seven European nation-states were recognised under US President Wilsons principle of national self-determination. This mushrooming of nation-states turned into a survival of the fittest. The fittest of all was undoubtedly the German state, which soon dominated Europe and eventually outstripped Britain economically. It did this through an industrialisation process that involved heavily protectionist policies in precisely the way List had predicted it would have to. It became the main model for other European states attempting to industrialise after the second half of the 19th century. The building of highly protected, often autarkic, nation-states dominated Europe for the first half of the 20th century. This process eventually culminated in the Second World War. The return to free trade and beyond

30 The war all but destroyed the economies of most of the nation-states of Europe, including Britain. However, the period of nation-building had created a series of high cultural entities representing the single idioms necessary for the existence of modern industrialised states. With the support of US Marshall aid a new round of rapid industrialisation took place within this framework. But now the industrial superiority of Britain had clearly ended. A series of nation-states all possessing the basic requirements for the development of relatively equally industrialised capitalist economies existed. This situation corresponded to the second from last stage of Lists analysis. Under such circumstances, he had insisted, free trade would be in the interest of all the nation-states involved and would no longer represent domination by Britain. His prognosis would, once more, appear to be confirmed by events. A series of free trade agreements have taken place between the nation-states of Europe within the context of similar moves on a world scale led by the US. The US moves could be interpreted as an attempt to retain its own domination of the world economy in much the same way as Britains 19th century free trade policy had. However, the European agreements between a number of relatively equal industrialised nation-states produced tangible economic results for all and set in motion a process that led eventually to the formation of the European Single Market in 1992. But there remains a further stage of Lists economic analysis of the necessary development of capitalism, one that he only vaguely alluded to, but which appeared to point to the ultimate undermining of the nation-states he saw as playing such a vital role in the industrialisation process. List predicted that the return of free trade between equally industrialised nations would increase internal competition through both capital and labour crossing national boundaries and competing with home capital and labour. In the late 1970s and early 1980s a rapid expansion in the movement of capital across national boundaries took place on a world scale. The upward trend has continued since then. This globalisation is widely recognised to be undermining the role of nation-states. It has been a driving force in a European economic integration process. The removal of national boundary restrictions to capital flow within the EU has been one aspect. Closely related to this same process is the move towards a single currency, particularly through preparation for a European Central Bank. The mobility of labour between nation-states has been a slower process than the movement of capital, but nonetheless it has also proceeded in the way List predicted. The effect has been to undermine the nation-states defence of a single high culture and produce a development towards multicultural societies. As Jrgen Habermas has commented: "today, all of us live in pluralistic societies that move further away from the format of a nation-state based on a culturally more or less homogenous population. The diversity in cultural forms of life, ethnic groups, world-views and religions is either huge already, or at least growing."82 Linda Colley considers the effects of these developments on British nationalism:

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Protestantism is now only a residual part of its (Britains) culture, so it can no longer define itself against a predominantly Catholic Europe. Indeed, now that it is part of the European Economic Community, Great Britain can no longer comfortably define itself against the European powers at all. Whether it likes it or not, it is fast becoming part of an increasingly federal Europe, though the agonies that British politicians and voters of all partisan persuasions so plainly experience in coming to terms with Brussels and its dictates show just how rooted the perception of Continental Europe as the Other still is.83 Predicting the final effects of these changes remains beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, one thing seems certain: the European nation-states were a necessary product of a particular stage in the development of capitalist industrial society. As that stage ends, new forms going beyond the nation-state seem inevitable.

Quoted by Eric Hobsbawm in Nationalism. Edited by John Hutchinson & Anthony D. Smith. Page 178 2 Physics and Politics (1887). Quoted by Eric Hobsbawm in Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Page 1. 3 Nations and States. (1977). Quoted by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities. (1983) Page 13. 4 Popper. Brian Magee. Page 31. 5 Conjectures and Refutations. The growth of Scientific Knowledge. Karl Popper. Page 46. 6 Popper. Bryan Magee. Page 32. 7 Confessions of a Philosopher. Bryan Magee. Page 211. 8 Dialectics of Nature. Engels. Page 226. 9 Ibid. Page 229. 10 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Karl Marx. 1977. Page 20-21. 11 Manifesto of the Communist Party. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Marx Engels Collected Works. Page 482. 12 Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. Perry Anderson. Page 204. 13 Ibid. Page 183. 14 Ibid. 15 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Karl Marx. Page 21. 16 Marx Engels Collected Works. Vol 6. Page 503. 17 Both quotations from Engels describing Marx's position in a preface to Marx's On the Question of Free Trade. 18 Ibid. 19 Nationalism in Europe 1815 to the present. Edited by Stuart Woolf. Page 9. 20 Ibid. 21 Capital. Karl Marx. Afterword to the second German edition. Page 29. 22 Marxism and Nationalism. Ephraim Nimni. Page 29. 23 See Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Eric Hobsbawm. Page 34. 24 Marx Engels Collected Works. Vol 6. Page 6. Festival of Nations. Engels. 1846. 25 Quoted in Nationalism. 1994. Edited by John Hutchinson & Anthony D. Smith. Page 155. 26 Thought and Change. 1964. Ernest Gellner. 27 When was Wales? BBC Wales Annual Radio Lecture, 12 November 1979. Reproduced in Nationalism in Europe. 1815 to the present. Page 192. 28 Mapping the Nation. 1996. Edited by Gopal Balakrishan. Page 255. 29 Ibid. Page 110. 30 Nations and Nationalism. Ernest Gellner. Page 114. 31 Mapping the Nation. Page 143. 32 Encounters with Nationalism. Ernest Gellner. Page 2. 33 Ibid. 34 Communism and Nationalism. Roman Szporluk. Page 3. 35 Marx Engels Collected Works. Vol 6. Page 290. 36 National System of Political Economy. Fredrich List. Translated by G A Matile. Page v. 37 Ibid. Page 69. 38 Ibid. Page v. 39 Ibid. Page 80. 40 Ibid. Page 81. 41 Three Historical Regions of Europe. Jen Szcs. From Civil Society and the State. Edited by John Keane. Page 315. 42 Ibid. Page 312 43 Ibid. Page 299
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Ibid. Page 311 Ibid. Page 322 46 Ibid. Page 326-327 47 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. David Landes. Page 45 48 Ibid. 49 Capitalism & Modern Social Theory. Anthony Giddens. Page 131. 50 Ibid. Page 126. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid. Page 129. 53 Ibid. Page 132. 54 Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. Perry Anderson. Page 204. 55 Puritans. Religion and Politics in Seventeenth Century England and America. John Adair. Page 213. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. Page 274. 58 Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837 Linda Colley. Page 11. 59 Ibid. Page 12. 60 Ibid. Page 26. 61 Ibid. Page 28. 62 Ibid. Page 18. 63 Ibid. Page 6. 64 Linda Colley. Page 5. 65 The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. David Landes. Page 233. 66 Ibid. Page 231. 67 Cambridge Illustrated History of France. Colin Jones. Page 175. 68 Ibid. 69 Europe. A History. Norman Davies. Page 715. 70 Cambridge Illustrated History of France. Colin Jones. Page 187. 71 Quoted in Armies in Revolution. John Ellis. Page 114. 72 Ibid. 73 Encounters with Nationalism. Ernest Gellner. Page 24. 74 National System of Political Economy. Fredrich List. Page 79. 75 Conditions of Liberty. Civil Society and its Rivals. Ernest Gellner. Page 115. 76 Ibid. 77 Ibid. Page 116. 78 Ibid. Page 113. 79 Ibid. Page 114. 80 Ibid. Page 115. 81 The Age of Empire 1875-1914. E J Hobsbawm. Page 148. 82 The European Nation-state - Its Achievements and its Limits. On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship. Jrgen Habermas. In Mapping the Nation. Edited by Gopal Balakrishan. Page 289. 83 Britons. Linda Colley. Page 6.
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