JOHN BREUILLY: The Sources of Nationalist Ideology

A major problem in modern political thought concerns the relationship between state and society. Each seemed on its way to becoming a self-contained sphere. The growth of a free-market economy extending beyond individual states gave rise to ideas about society as a 'private', largely self-regulating set of activities. The growth of bureaucratic absolutism gave rise to the idea of an enlightened state detached from society which it ruled according to rational norms.
This is a very different problem from that concerning the relationship between a government and its subjects. Such a relationship is set wholly 'within' the sphere of politics. One conception of the nation—that is, of the nation as the body of citizens—remains inside that wholly political framework, even if some implicit reference to cultural identity is involved.1 But the problem of the relationship between society and state concerns the nature of the connection between politics and non-politics. Obviously state and society are not really separate from one another and they are abstractions employed to make sense of complex human affairs. But they seem unavoidable abstractions in the modern world; they have to be given definition and content, and the nature of their relationship with one another has to be established.
One way of doing this is to subordinate one of the categories, state or society, to the other. The most influential accounts, liberal and Marxist, tended to subordinate state to society. The nature of the state and of political conflict was derived from society through concepts such as the social contract or the class struggle. Others, such as Hobbes, sought to deny that society had any independent structure without political order or, like Hegel, regarded the state as the realm of universal values far beyond the petty and sectional concerns of civil society. But, except in certain utopian visions, the sense of an enduring distinction between the two spheres of state and society, and of the problem of their relationship, could never be set aside.
All these various approaches to the problem accepted the distinction and the difficulties it raised, and tried to provide general, rational answers. But from a conservative position the attempt at a general and rational understanding of human affairs itself came under attack. This attack was taken up in a polemical form by Burke in his objections to the pretensions of the French revolutionaries. He believed that their claims to be able to outline an ideal social and political order on the basis of universal reason and then to act politically in order to realise it were based on a false view of what human beings could understand and do. Burke insisted that each society is particular and highly complicated. Human understanding was limited, and, therefore, deliberate interference in the complex web of human affairs which had built up imperceptibly over a long period of time should also be limited. 'The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or the quality of his affairs. '2
This set a limit on human reason which went beyond the traditional conservative ideas about man's moral failings. But the advance of 'reason' and the great claims made for rational forces such as the modern state, or the market economy, required an even stronger rebuttal. Burke had simply argued that society was opaque. Far more radical was the argument that each society was unique. From this argument the distinctive features of nationalist ideology were to be derived.
I shall call this idea of uniqueness historicism. A brief review of one German writer, Herder (1744-1803), will supply the principal features of this argument. This is not to suggest that Herder was the first or the only one to advance these ideas, or that he was himself a nationalist. In fact the historicist case had been put earlier and more originally by the Italian writer Vico. Other German thinkers of the late eighteenth century developed historicist ideas. Herder's own political values, such as they were, if anything contradicted his historicist position and cannot be described as nationalist. However, he developed historicist ideas in a particularly striking way and linked them firmly to a particular concept of the nation. Furthermore, his ideas had a direct influence upon those who, during the nineteenth century, began to develop elaborate nationalist ideologies.
Herder grew up in an intellectual environment which was putting increasing emphasis on particularity and variety in human affairs and in which history was developing as a critical discipline. Germany itself was a land of contrast, with many petty states alongside large and powerful ones. But the ideas, and the states, were under pressure, regarded as embodiments of fragmentation and backwardness. Progress and reason suggested an ever greater uniformity and an end to the myriad of small states. Herder reacted strongly against what he regarded as both condescending and threatening, and sought a firm ground from which to defend variety in human affairs.
A good place for seeing what form this defence took is his view of language. His starting point is very simple: only language has made men human.' The notion of `pre-linguistic man' is, for Herder, meaningless. Man is defined by his language capacity. What is more, language can be learnt only in a community. It is synonymous with thought. Every language is different from every other. These points, to which most people today would assent, were not considered beyond debate at the time Herder wrote. Some argued that the origins of human language lay in human invention. Herder rejected this view. But from this position one could go on to make some more far-reaching claims.
If language is thought, and can be learnt only in a community, it follows that each community has its own mode of thought. Furthermore, to go on to argue that languages are unique could lead to the conclusion that each language is not simply a particular way of expressing universal values. Rather, it is the manifestation of unique values and ideas. Understanding of a language comes not by translating it into the terms of 'universal reason' or into another language but by learning it. Language is the property of the community, but it stretches beyond any one generation. It may be modified and adapted according to the needs of the community but it cannot be radically transformed. Moreover, language does not only have continuity through time, but, in its vocabulary, grammar, sounds, etc., has a unity. A language is not an arbitrary collection of utterances. Finally, no language is superior or inferior to any other, as there is no general scale against which all can be measured.
These views are of major significance simply because language is so important in human society. But the arguments can be extended much further if all other human activities are understood as sorts of languages. Dress, architecture, customs, ceremonial, song, law: all these and many other activities can be understood in the same way. Ultimately 'community' is understood as the sum total of these modes of expression. Furthermore, this sum total is itself more than a collection of items and must be grasped as a complex unity. The ambition of the student of any society must be to grasp this unity by learning all the ways of the society in question. Each element in a society only makes sense in terms of the whole, which, in turn, is manifested only through these various elements. Understanding a society is rather like learning a language.
The major form such understanding took was that of history. History has been given a greater or lesser role in the understanding of human affairs from other perspectives, but for historicism history is the only way to understand a society. History is not 'evidence' on which theories could be tested or a charter drawn up from which to justify present decisions. It is not a constraint on the present or a rich profusion of the various forms human nature has assumed. Rather it is the only way to apprehend the spirit of a community; it is the principal way of learning the language of a particular society.
There were various elements within this historical approach. The study of language itself was regarded as particularly important. So also was the study of ordinary people, who were regarded as the core of a society. A concern with folklore which is more than simply antiquarian is largely derived from historicist concerns. Finally, in more modern times an ahistorical approach has been added to these forms of understanding. Certain types of social anthropology insist on the need to understand the whole community, and in its own terms. However, this understanding has little historical dimension. The notion of wholeness tends to be expressed through the idea of every activity having a function within the community.
There are serious problems about the historicist approach. The rejection of universal standards of reason raises problems about the rationality of the terms of analysis that are employed. The need to apprehend the spirit or the 'wholeness' of a society which is central to the historicist position tends to express itself in the form of intuition. It is not relevant to go into these problems or to deal with the major ways in which historicist work has developed. Only in so far as these matters are reflected in the ideology derived from historicism will they be considered.
Translation into Ideology
Strictly speaking it should be impossible for historicism to give rise to political value judgements. At most it could insist that it is wrong to apply one's own judgements to another society. But the intrusion of certain extra ideas into the historicist position could change this.
The most important might be called the idea of authenticity. One can see this idea being introduced in Herder's own writings and used to back up his own rather liberal political values. Herder denied that government could be understood as the product of a social contract or divine agency. Neither has any historical basis. Both seem to involve the notion of a jump from a situation without government to one with government. Both are used, in fact, not as an historical claim but as a way of evaluating government by some universal standard. Herder, instead, insisted that government is a historical development. He argued that society began as a number of families. In this situation no formal system of government was required. But as families joined together to form more extensive societies it became necessary to develop new forms of leadership which took the form of government. The conquest of one society by another also can introduce a separate system of government.
Thus far Herder seems to work from within the historicist position. It is when he evaluates this development that he moves beyond it. Conquest is regarded as the disruption of the natural development of a particular society.
Nature produces families; the most natural state therefore is one people (Volk) with a natural character ...
Nothing seems more obviously opposed to the purpose of government than the unnatural enlargement of states, the wild mixing together of different human species and nations under one sceptre.4
Herder particularly objected to large, impersonal 'machine' states such as the Prussia of Frederick the Great, which he saw as the artificial product of war and conquest.
A somewhat similar version of this approach, in more elaborate form, can be found in the work of the Czech historian and nationalist, Palacky. He took over from Herder the idea of the Slays as a peaceful group of peoples subjected to oppression and exploitation by various robber peoples such as the Magyars and Germans. The Czechs, identified as a language group, began with their free, 'natural' societies; clusters of families with an informal, democratic system of government. Palacky goes on to describe the various conquests. Resistances to these conquests are focused upon as high points in the national history. The Hussite movement is interpreted in this way. The various activities of the Czechs are seen as manifestations of their national spirit. Palacky hoped that his history would help restore a keen sense of national identity which was, in turn, a necessary condition for a reassertion of Czech rights.
This distinction thus drawn between what was natural and unnatural in history is paralleled in the other major areas of historicist concern. Fichte, for example, in the field of language went much further than the aesthetic concern with purifying language. For him language mirrored the national soul, and to purge the language of alien impurities was to defend the national soul against subversion by foreign values. The Germans, he argued, unlike other Teutonic groups, possessed a continuous and 'living' language. But its life required constant protection. Fichte regarded Latin as a dead language, and for him 'dead' took on a powerful, literal meaning. He argued that to take abstract, lifeless Latin terms into German would have a deadening effect. The-German language was more concrete. The importation of Latin words would lead Germans to ascribe some of the alien values associated with them to their German 'equivalents'. Gradually the values for which the German words originally stood would be lost. The defence of the living language was simultaneously a defence of the values of the human group using it. 5 In a similar way the racist currents of thought developed in the nineteenth century identified a pure racial group and then sought to protect its purity from outside influences, In both cases defence could also come to take the form of a purge of impure elements in order to return to the pure, 'natural' state of affairs.
In the field of social anthropology similar ends could be reached through the employment of the concept of 'equilibrium'. Changes introduced from outside into a 'tribe' (itself partially a product of historicist intellectual values) could be seen as upsetting the state of equilibrium. Everything in that society could be justified as contributing to the equilibrium. Jomo Kenyatta, having studied in London under the functionalist anthropologist Malinowski, produced an account of the Kikuyu which employed these sorts of ideas." For example, his defence of female circumcision argued that it was arrogant of Europeans to condemn the practice as barbaric. It was not only arrogant, it was mistaken. That condemnation rested on the attempt to apply some universal standard to all social practices. But the practice only had its meaning, its rationality, in the context of a unique community. Within that community this meaning was associated with the way in which the passage from female adolescence to womanhood was marked, and that passage in turn was a major element of the social and sexual structure of Kikuyu society. It was onIy from within that frame of reference that judgements could be made.
One could multiply examples of this sort many times. The basic assumption is that one can identify a particular human unit—the Czech people, the German language, the Aryan race, the Kikuyu tribe—and establish what is natural within it and use that unit, in its natural state, as the source of value judgements. Deviations from that natural state are, of course, unnatural, and what is unnatural is bad. In this way the historicist concern with understanding society as a unique totality can be transformed into a way of making value judgements about historical change in terms of the way unnatural developments undermine a natural state of affairs.
However, the units identified are necessarily more or less arbitrary ones. Groups and languages can be categorised in many other ways. It is difficult to understand why war and conquest, such frequent occurrences, should be regarded as unnatural. It is difficult to see how the historicist can reconcile himself to not being able to understand the many 'unnatural' societies which exist, and how one understands historical change. Finally, of course, the 'return' to the natural situation can be understood only in a very general and vague way, that is, as a return to the spirit of that past. The Czechs Palacky studied did not and could not have produced Palace himself or the complex and changing society of Bohemia which gave rise to Czech nationalism. The 'traditional' Kikuyu whom Kenyatta described were heavily Christianised and many of them opposed female circumcision. These arbitrary judgements, justified by the contrast of natural with unnatural, are an essential ingredient of nationalist ideology.
The notion of a return to the spirit of the past was often accompanied by a historical perspective which read the appropriate trends into events. Figures in the past became instruments of the national destiny or obstacles in its path. Thus Heinrich von Treitschke, the German nationalist historian, could defend the actions of the eighteenth-century Prussian state because it was seen as the vehicle of later unification. On the other hand the Habsburg empire, as a multi-national state, and the smaller German states (particularly the allies of Napoleon) were subjected to a much more critical treatment. Associated with this, von Treitschke came to emphasise the role of Protestantism in the German national spirit and to deny the centrality of the Catholic religion in German society. Again, this is arbitrary and inconsistent with a proper historicist approach. So too is the identification of figures from the 'national' past in terms of current political disputes. In the disputes between supporters and opponents of the internal settlement in Zimbabwe there were rival claims to be the true heirs of the participants in the disturbances of 1896-97 in Southern Rhodesia. The movement led by Sithole used populist language; that led by Mugabe used class language; but in both cases the ideological use of history was the same.7
The final, and most important, ideological ingredient is the way in which the historicist concept of community is linked to political demands. The demand for a nation-state with many of the features of other nation-states seems hard to reconcile with the justification that a unique nation needs its own special form of independence. Some consistent cultural nationalists have indeed resisted the demand for national self-determination on the grounds that it is an imitation of the West.8 But this is exceptional. Usually what happens is that nationalist ideology operates with three notions which are mutually incompatible but, if not properly examined, can seem powerfully persuasive.
First, there is the notion of the unique national community. Second, there is the idea of the nation as a society which should have its own state. But in this understanding the basic distinction between state and society is accepted in a way that contradicts the historicist view of community as a whole. Finally the nation is thought of as the body of citizens—that is, a wholly political conception—and self-determination is justified in terms of universal political principles. Nationalist ideology never makes a rational connection between the cultural and the political concept of the nation because no such connection is possible. Instead, by a sort of sleight of hand dependent upon using the same term, 'nation', in different ways, it appears to demonstrate the proposition that each nation should have its nation-state. In this way it can superficially appear to have provided an answer to the problem of the relationship between state and society.
There are numerous variations upon the basic themes I have outlined. The nation can be defined in a great variety of ways, and this can give rise to conflicting claims about who belongs to which nationality. The values of the nation, its true 'spirit', are matters of even greater dispute in which the he various claims made have in common only the fact that they can be subjected to no rational tests. The manner in which the contrast between natural and unnatural is drawn also varies widely. These variations will depend on a combination of intellectual tradition, inherent plausibility and political need. Thus the initial impulse behind the categorising of many African societies as tribes can be located in European intellectual traditions. They were adapted to social reality in various ways but retained an inherent plausibility because of the small-scale nature of many African societies. They could be sustained both because their advocates had the power virtually to project their own ideas about social identity on to colonial subjects and because it suited elements in indigenous Society to manipulate these categories to their own advantage. Such categories, enshrined in various forms of 'indirect rule', hardened and shaped much political action. In their turn they have shaped territorial nationalist movements—both by forming part of their political material and by forcing nationalists to relate cultural diversity to the claim for territorial rather than 'tribal' independence. The ideology is not, therefore, a gloss upon some preexistent social reality but a constituent of that reality. A similar argument for the way in which the concept of the 'Oriental' has shaped relations between the West and societies of the Middle and Far East has recently been advanced with great force and subtlety by Edward Said.9
Nationalist ideology is neither an expression of national identity (at least, there is no rational way of showing that to be the case) nor the arbitrary invention of nationalists for political purposes. It arises out of the need to make sense of complex social and political arrangements. But that need is itself shaped both by intellectual traditions and the sorts of responses which any intellectual scheme evokes when it is activated in some way or another.
At the highest intellectual level anthropologists or scholars of the Orient or political thinkers carefully work through what they regard as the relevant evidence in order to test their ideas. At a practical level administrators, traders, missionaries and others work with particular assumptions about social arrangements and values in order to achieve their own objectives. In so far as they do achieve them they will tend to take these assumptions as true. The same point can be made about nationalists. They also begin with a fund of intellectual assumptions about what society is and how it is organised. They relate these assumptions to their own political projects. In fact they argue that those political projects are determined by their assump-tions; that they are the spokesmen for the nation. However, their precise political projects and the manner in which these are carried through are the product of certain political situations rather than the expression of national needs. Nevertheless, the proclamation of such needs as the basis of their politics is an essential ingredient of that politics. Precisely because their assumptions about national identity and need are not purely arbitrary they have a more or less plausible connection with existing social arrangements and needs, with actual beliefs and with often widespread political grievances. But of course the ideology is more than a reflection of those things; rather it incorporates them into a broader vision which transforms their significance. The ideology also provides nationalists with a cause in which not only they themselves but many others genuinely believe, often including opponents who have been brought up with similar intellectual assumptions and values. In so far as nationalist objectives appear relevant to the Interests of various political elites and social classes, so far will nationalist ideology be enhanced by the way in which members of these groups can agree that they are part of the nation. In this way nationalist ideology actually brings into being an imitation of its own ideas. In so far as nationalism is successful it appears to be true. That, of course, is its ultimate form of plausibility.
However, I have only considered the intellectual origins of nationalist ideology and its translation into ideological form at a fairly sophisticated level. To work effectively as a popular political ideology it needs simplification, repetition and concreteness. It is because nationalist ideology is particularly adaptive in these ways that it can have great popular appeal. Simplification involves above all the construction of stereotypes. There are stereotypes of the nation in terms of history or racial characteristics or cultural practices as well as stereotypes of enemies. Repetition through speeches, newspaper articles, rallies, songs, etc., is an essential part of the work of a nationalist party. The turning of these simplified and repeated themes into concrete form is achieved primarily through symbolism and ceremonial.
Conclusion
[R]eturning to the problem of the relationship of state and society, the nationalist 'solution to the problem is, on the surface, quite simple. Societies (nations) are unique. Government by alien societies can only do violence to the unique national spirit. Therefore each nation must have its own govenment. That government is the nation-state. This is not merely an abstract ideal. History can be understood only in terms of the achievements and frustrations of the nation. The demand for statehood is rooted in the national spirit, even if inarticulate and repressed, and the nationalist simply speaks for that spirit.
But the identity of the nation is provided in arbitrary ways. The leap from culture to politics is made by portraying the nation at one moment as a cultural community and at another as a political community whilst insisting that in an ideal state the national community will not be 'split' into cultural and political spheres. The nationalist can exploit this perpetual ambiguity. National independence can be portrayed as the freedom of the citizens who make up the (political) nation or as the freedom of the collectivity which makes up the (cultural) nation. Nationalist ideology is a pseudo-solution to the problem of the relationship between state and society, but its plausibility derives from its roots in genuine intellectual responses to that problem.
The appeal of this pseudo-solution is that it enables the nationalist to take a wide variety of practices and sentiments prevailing among the population of a particular territory and to turn them into political justifications. By seeming to abolish the distinctions between culture and politics, society and state, private and public, the nationalist has access to a whole range of sentiments, idioms and practices which would hitherto have been regarded as irrelevant to politics but are now turned into the values underlying political action. It would be wrong to see nationalism as the expression of these values in political form. That view is tantamount to accepting the self-assessment of nationalists. Nationalist ideology works on these values in a new way, and it operates on a great variety of levels. Furthermore, it selects values in ways designed to enhance their political significance. The general point is that this emphasis on cultural distinctiveness and values has particular advantages in a situation where it is possible to mobilise mass support or co-ordinate a wide variety of elites in a bid for territorial independence. It is also of value in an international situation where the claim to state power is regarded as legitimate only if it is couched in the form of national self-determination. Cultural appeals add to that legitimacy and also help provide the basis of support for a nationalist movement which gives its particular claim to state power credibility. The claim to uniqueness is ultimately used to justify the claim to have a state just like any other.
Nationalist ideology has its roots in intellectual responses to the modem problem of the relationship between state and society. This response, above all in the form of historicism, was a serious attempt to deal with the problem and to rebut what it saw as the falsehoods of analysis based on allegedly universal standards of reason. It was turned into ideology by means of notions such as authenticity and teleology. It was also combined in a powerful but illogical way with purely democratic and political values. The net result was to transform certain important ways of understanding human affairs into political ideology which was beyond critical examination. At the same time the historicist concern with history and popular values and practices was turned into various symbolic and ceremonial forms. These had a particularly powerful appeal because of their quality of self-reference and the way they took existing sentiments and actions and transmuted them into political ideology. This appeal in turn was grounded upon the claim to link cultural distinctiveness with the demand for political self-determination. Such claims had to be related to specific interests and only worked in particular sorts of political situations. Furthermore, no particular element within this ideology can be automatically regarded as decisive among supporters. But, with these qualifications, nationalist ideology can still be regarded as a powerful force which was essential in the work of co-ordination, mobilisation and providing legitimacy which was carried out by a nationalist movement.
[Nationalism and the State (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1982), 335-44,
348--51.1