Nationalism

When had nations been born?

Some defend that they came from the middle ages, but others defend that nationalism created
the concept of nation in the XIXth century. Gellner is the most important thinker of the
modernist school and he defends that nationalism is a consequence of the bourgeoisie
revolution, but the parts that form a nation existed before that (language, culture…). Seton-
Watson defends. Nationalism has a pejorative sense; most people use patriot instead but
those are basically synonyms.

Civic nationalism vs Ethnic nationalism

Civic nationalism is “good nationalism” the example is French people that they are French
because the want to be. Ethnic is not based on peoples will, is based on language, culture and
religion (most extreme cases race). This is a very simplistic and often wrong view. The example
of why this is false is that the reason to annex savoy was language. Every nationalism can be
civic or ethnic according to circumstances.

Rousseau was the father of civic nationalism and he belived in the will of the people to
represent a nation. Herder was the father of ethnic one, he considered himself as a disciplpe of
rousseau, and he was in favor of European minorities.

Nationalism was mainly a male thing, there are some female icons though, for example
Agustina of Aragon, a Catalonian that fought the French in 1812. Cristina di Belgiojoso was an
Italian nationalist that took part in the unification wars. Constance Markievicz was a leader and
a soldier for Irish independence.

In the old regime a nation was only concentrated in the king because nationalism didn’t exist
after the liberals. From 1928 jews were considered a nation as Stalin gave them a territory
making them a nation according to his definition. French intellectuals and politicians didn’t
know if people in Alsace and Lorraine wanted to be French but they didn’t cared and assumed
that they wanted, in 1911 an election took place and only 10% of people voted in favor of
French parties.

The discussion about what is a language is very complex as the term is defined in very different
ways.

French language was forcefully imposed in the French regions were other languages were
more popular.

Self determination is asking people what they want to be

Before the principal of national sovereignty nationalism was imposible. Religion is very
important in nationalism.

Marx and engels defended that the working class had no country and that the movement was
international, the irish nationalism movement made marx change his ideas and said that if
Ireland gained independence the empire would collapse and a communist revolution could
take place. As soon as he added the exception the rule of international proletarianism broke.
Diferent socialist from other countries wondered why they couldn’t have a state.
Wilson thought that if the principle of nationalities was applied in Europe war would never
happen. After the 1st WW a lot of nation states were created but since a lot of nationalities
were mixed in those territories a percentage of the population feel oppressed under the new
state. According to lenin self-determination was an excuse to recover lost territories, but a lot
of people didn’t want to join the USSR and he thought that since communism was so good all
people would want to join the union. Rosa Luxemburg thought that lenin was too authoritarian
she defended that self-determination oppressed the working class and creating new countries
or annexing others would have some people oppress others. Otto Bauer thought that creating
new countries was a mistake and instead defended that the AHE should let people express
themselves in their own culture, this is cultural self-determination.

Self determination is a philosophical term created by kant as something individual not

collective, it accuired this sense after the 2nd international. In a lot of places people lived
together and spoke various languages. People were convinced by flawed studies that people
only spoke one language and a lot of places were marked as speaking only one language but
the language was different from study to study. Self determination is not the same as
independence.

Primordialism is the idea that nations or ethnic identities are fixed, natural, and
ancient. Primordialists argue that each individual has a single inborn ethnic identity
independent of historical processes.

Primordialism can be traced philosophically to the ideas of German Romanticism, particularly

in the works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Johann Gottfried Herder. For Herder, the nation was
synonymous with language group. In Herder's thinking, language was synonymous with
thought, and as each language was learnt in community, then each community must think
differently. This also suggests that the community would hold a fixed nature over time.