The Nature of Nationalism

Author(s): Hans Kohn

Source: The American Political Science Review , Dec., 1939, Vol. 33, No. 6 (Dec., 1939), pp.
1001-1021
Published by: American Political Science Association

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM

HANS KOHN
Smith College

Nationalism as we understand it is not older than the second

half of the eighteenth century. Its first great manifestation was the
French Revolution, which gave the new movement an increased
dynamic force. Nationalism had, however, become manifest at the
end of the eighteenth century almost simultaneously in a number
of widely separated European countries. Its time in the evolution
of mankind had arrived, and although the French Revolution was
one of the most powerful factors in its intensification and spread,
it was not its date of birth. Like all historical movements, national-
ism has its roots deep in the past. The conditions which made its
emergence possible had matured during centuries before they con-
verged at its formation. These political, economic, and intellectual
developments took a long time for their growth and proceeded in
the various European countries at different pace. It is impossible
to grade them according to their importance or to make one de-
pendent upon the other. All are closely interconnected, each react-
ing upon the other; and although their growth can be traced
separately, their effects and consequences cannot be separated
otherwise than in the analysis of the scholar; in life, they are
indissolubly intertwined.
Nationalism is inconceivable without the ideas of popular sover-
eignty having preceded-without a complete revision of the posi-
tion of ruler and ruled, of classes and castes. The aspect of the
universe and of society had to be secularized with the help of a
new natural science and of natural law as understood by Grotius
and Locke. The traditionalism of economic life had to be broken
by the rise of the third estate, which was to turn the attention
away from the royal courts and their civilization to the life, lan-
guage, and arts of the people. This new class found itself less bound
by tradition than the nobility or clergy; it represented a new force
striving for new things; it was ready to break with the past,
flaunting tradition, in its opinions even more than it did in reality.
In its rise, it claimed to represent not only a new class and its
interests, but the whole people. Where the third estate became

1001

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1002 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

powerful in the eighteenth century, as in Great Britain, in France,

and in the United States, nationalism found its expression pre-
dominantly, but never exclusively, in political and economic
changes. Where, on the other hand, the third estate was still weak
and only in a budding stage in the eighteenth and at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, as in Germany, Italy, and among the
Slavonic peoples, nationalism found its expression predominantly
in the cultural field. It was there at the beginning not so much the
nation-state as the Volksgeist and its manifestations in literature
and folk-lore, in the mother tongue and in history, which became
the center of the attention of nationalism. With the growing
strength of the third estate, with the political and cultural awaken-
ing of the masses, this cultural nationalism, however, in the course
of the nineteenth century, soon turned into desire for the formation
of a nation-state.
The growth of nationalism is the process of integration of the
masses of the people into a common political form. Nationalism
therefore presupposes the existence, in fact or as an ideal, of a
centralized form of government over a distinct and large territory.
This form was created by the absolute monarchs, who were the
pace-makers of modern nationalism; the French Revolution in-
herited and continued the centralizing tendencies of the kings, but
at the same time it filled the central organization with a new spirit
and gave it a power of cohesion unknown before. Nationalism is
unthinkable before the emergence of the modern state in the period
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Nationalism ac-
cepted this form, but changed it by animating it with a new feeling
of life and with a new religious fervor.
For its composite texture, nationalism used, in its growth, some
of the oldest and most primitive feelings of man which throughout
history we find as important factors in the formation of social
groups. There is a natural tendency in man-and we mean by
"natural tendency" a tendency which, having been produced by
social circumstances since time practically immemorial, appears to
us as natural-to love his birthplace or the place of his childhood
sojourn, its surroundings, its climate, the contours of hills and
valleys, of rivers and trees. We are all subject to the immense
power of habitude, and even if in a later stage of development we
are attracted by the unknown and by change, we delight to come
back and be at rest in the reassuring sight of the familiar. Man has

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1003

an easily understandable preference for his own language as the

only one which he thoroughly understands and in which he feels
at home. He prefers native customs and native food to alien ones,
which appear to him unintelligible and undigestible. Should he
travel, he will return to his chair and his table with a feeling of
relaxation and will be elated by the joy of finding himself again
at home, away from the strain of a sojourn in foreign lands and
contact with foreign peoples.
Small wonder that he will take pride in his native characteristics,
and that he will easily believe in their superiority! As they are the
only ones in which civilized people like himself can apparently
feel at home, are they not the only ones fit for human beings? On
the other hand, contact with alien men and alien customs, which
appear to him strange, unfamiliar, and therefore threatening, will
arouse in him a feeling of distrust of everything foreign. This
-feeling of strangeness will again develop in him sentiments of
superiority, and sometimes even of open hostility. The more primi-
tive men are, the stronger will be their distrust of strangers, and
therefore the intensity of their group feeling. Rudyard Kipling,
in his poem, "The Stranger," gives forceful expression to this
general feeling.

The Stranger within my gate,

He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk-
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock

They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies 1 tell.
We do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,

He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control-
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
May repossess his blood.

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1004 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

These feelings always existed. They do not form nationalism.

They correspond to certain facts-territory, language, common
descent-which we also find in nationalism. But here they are
entirely transformed, charged with new and different emotions,
and embedded in a broader context. They are the natural elements
out of which nationalism is formed. But nationalism is not a
natural phenomenon, not a product of "eternal" or "natural"
laws; it is a product of the growth of social and intellectual factors
at a certain stage of history. It may be said that some feeling of
nationality existed before the birth of modern nationalism, a feeling
varying in strength and in frequency from time to time, at some
epochs almost completely extinguished, at others more or less
clearly discernible. But it was largely unconscious and inarticulate.
It did not influence the thought and actions of men in a deep and
all-pervading way. It found a clear expression only occasionally
in individuals, and in groups only at times of stress or provocation.
It did not permanently or in the long run determine their aims or
actions. It was no purposeful will welding together all the individ-
uals into a unity of emotions, thoughts, and actions.
Before the age of nationalism, the masses very rarely became
conscious of the fact that the same language was spoken over a
large territory. In fact, it was not even the same language; the
several dialects existed side by side, sometimes even incomprehen-
sible to the man of a neighboring province. The spoken language
was accepted as a natural fact. It was in no way regarded as a
political or cultural factor, still less as an object of political or
cultural struggle. During the Middle Ages, people deduced from
the Bible that as mankind was one, it should have one common
language, and that the diversity of languages was the result of the
sinfulness of man, and God's punishment at the time of the build-
ing of the Tower of Babel. Consciousness of language was aroused
only at times of expeditions and travel or in frontier districts.
There, the alien character of the group speaking the alien language
was felt, and many names of what we today call national groups de-
rive from the fact that they were first recognized as different groups
by those of alien tongue. Some of these national groups even re-
ceived their names from outside, because they were felt to be a dis-
tinct group by an outsider sooner than by a member of the group.
The Greek word barbaros, which means "strange" or "foreign," and
in consequence "rude" and "ignorant," probably has its source in

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1005

the idea of stammering or inability to speak in a comprehensible

way-a word akin to the Sanskrit expression barbara, which meant
stammering or non-Aryan. The Slavs called the Germans with
whom they came into contact niemci, which means the "mutes"-
people who cannot make themselves understood. A man speaking
an incomprehensible tongue seemed outside the pale of civilization.
But language was accepted by the Slavs and by other peoples as a
natural fact, not as a cultural inheritance. The language in which
the treasures of civilization were inherited and transferred was
generally, in medieval Europe as well as in Islam, in India as well
as in China, not the language spoken by the people. It was a
learned language accessible only to the educated class. Even if it
was not a language of different origin from the vernacular, it was
generally very different from the spoken language, and on account
of its many purely literary, classical associations, was understood
by only a small minority.
Before nationalism, language was very rarely stressed as a fact
on which the prestige and power of a group depended. Alien lan-
guages remained until the very last centuries the languages used
by official bodies, in the scholarly world, or among the upper
classes. To mention only one fact which stands for a large number:
the Breton estates, which were very jealous of their independence,
nevertheless spoke French, and in the Act of Union for the De-
fense of the Liberties of Brittany of 1719 the Breton spokesmen
did not mention language grievances. The translations of the Bible
in Protestant countries were not undertaken from any motives of
nationalism, but purely for the spreading of the true religion.
Queen Elizabeth had the Bible and the Prayer Book translated
into Welsh, and divine service held in Welsh, to liberate the Welsh
from the "ignorance of popery." With the growth of nationalism
in the following centuries, still dominated by religion but already
harboring the seeds of the new growth, the translations of the Bible
certainly were effective in arousing national feeling and in giving
a new importance to the national languages, which through the
spread of popular education and through the wider use of the
printing press, became more and more an element of growing cul-
tural importance. At the same time, the language became uniform,
obliterating the vernacular dialects or pushing them into the back-
ground, and covering a broader territory as its undisputed domain.
This larger territory became an object of love to its inhabitants

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1006 THIE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

only as a result of a long and difficult process. Again this love of

the homeland, which is regarded as the heart of patriotism, is not
a "natural" phenomenon, but an artificial product of historical and
intellectual development. The homeland which a man "naturally"
loves is his native village or valley or city, a small territory well
known in all its concrete details, abounding in personal memories,
and in which his life is generally lived throughout its whole span.
The whole territory inhabited by what we should consider today
as a nationality, a territory frequently distinguished by great diver-
sity of landscape and climate, was practically unknown to the
average man, and could become known only by instruction or
travel, which before the age of nationalism were limited to a very
small minority. Voltaire, who lived before this age, pointed out
that "plus cette patrie devient grande, moins on l'aime, car
l'amour partag6 s'affaiblit. I1 est impossible d'aimer tendrement une
famille trop nombreuse qu'on connait a peine."
Nationalism is not, as some scholars under the influence of
Aristotle suggest,' a harmonious natural growth qualitatively
identical with love for family and home. It is frequently assumed
that man loves in widening circles-his family, his village, his
tribe or clan, the nation, and finally humanity and the supreme
good. But love of home and family is a concrete feeling, accessible
to everyone in daily experience. Nationalism, and in an even higher
degree cosmopolitanism, is a highly complex and originally abstract
feeling which gains the emotional warmth of concreteness only
through the effects of an historical development which, by educa-
tion, economic interdependence, and corresponding political and
social institutions, brings about the integration of the masses and
their identification with a body far too great for any concrete
experience. Nationalism-our identification with the life and as-
pirations of uncounted millions whom we shall never know, with
a territory which we shall never visit in its entirety-is qualita-
tively different from the love of family or of home surroundings.
It is qualitatively akin to the love of humanity or of the whole
earth. Both belong to what Nietzsche called, in Thus Spoke Zara-

1 Aristotle understood by "state," or "fatherland," something that could easily

be felt as a reality in everyday concrete contacts. He therefore believed that a state
should consist of not less than ten, and of not more than ten thousand, inhabitants.
(Ethics, IX, 10, 3. The great barbarian empires were for him no real states. Politics,
VII, 4.)

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1007

thustra, Fernstenliebe, and which he distinguished from the Ndch-

stenliebe.2
Life in a common territory, subject to the same influences of
nature and, to an important although lesser degree, to the same
influences of history and legal systems, produces certain common
attitudes and traits which are often called national character. We
find in the literature of all peoples throughout history frequent
characterizations of national groups like the Gauls or the Greeks,
the Germans or the English. Some of these traits seem to persist
for a long time, and are mentioned by observers in different cen-
turies. Other traits seem to change under the influence of historical
developments. There are known instances where what was con-
sidered at a certain time the most essential character trait of a
nation changed after a few decades. In the beginning of the eight-
eenth century, the English were considered a nation most inclined
to revolution and to change, whereas the French were considered
a most stable and stolid nation. In the first half of the eighteenth
century, Voltaire could voice the general consensus about the
English: "The French are of the opinion, that the government of
this island is more tempestuous than the sea which surrounds it,
which indeed is true." One hundred years later, quite the opposite
opinion about the English and about the French was generally
held. The English were then, and are even today, considered (and
consider themselves) a stolid nation, proud in their disinclination
to revolution; while the French were considered a people easily
given to and delighting in revolutionary upheavals.
A similar change was produced in opinion about the Germans.
One hundred years ago, they were thought a most impractical
people, fit for metaphysics and music and poetry, but unfit for
modern industry and business. They were then the object of a
loving admiration and of a somewhat condescending benevolence
on the part of the more practical, and therefore more powerful,
peoples. One hundred years later, the Germans were producing
very few, if any, metaphysicians, musicians, or poets of renown,
but on the other hand had become most successful and practical
' Robert Michels has remarked that the Fernstenliebe extends from patriotism
to internationalism. "Denn Patriotismus und Internationalismus haben das Merk-
mal physischer Kontaktlosigkeit der sie Empfinden denzu den Mitempfindenden
gemeinsam." Der Patriotismus; Prolegomena zu seiner soziologischen Analyse
(Munich, 1929), p. 88. Patriotism and internationalism are, or can be, the product
of an historical development and of indoctrination by education.

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1008 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

adepts of modern industry and business. The attitude towards

them changed correspondingly. The Mongols were once, under
Genghis Khan, warriors famous for their belligerent character, and
brought all Asia and half of Europe under their yoke. In the six-
teenth century, through the adoption of Lamaist Buddhism, their
old spirit was completely broken and they were turned into peace-
ful and pious men. Under the influence of the Soviet government
and its revolutionary propaganda, however, the wild instincts of
the race have been reawakened; and a new and different con-
sciousness has started to animate the Mongol people and to break
their religious inhibitions.
The judgments of observers concerning the character of national
groups are, to a varying degree, colored by the political exigencies
of the situation or the sentimental attitudes of the author. It
seems extremely doubtful whether any judgment about a per-
manent national character of a people has any scientific value.
Between the extremes which may be illustrated by a statement
of John Morley that "in the literature of any people we perceive
under all contrasts of form produced by variable social influences
the one national character from first to last," and the opposite by
J. M. Robertson that "the nation considered as a continuous and
personalized organism is in large measure a metaphysical dream,"
we may accept the position of Sir Francis Galton that "different
aspects of the multifarious character of man respond to different
calls from without, so that the same individual, and much more
the same race, may behave very differently at different epochs."
Men and men's character are extremely complex, the more so, the
less primitive man is. This holds true even more of a highly complex
group like a nation. An immense diversity of individuals goes into
making up a nation, and during the life-span of a nation the most
diverse influences are exercised upon it, molding and transforming
it. For growth and change are the laws under which all historical
phenomena fall.

II

Nationalism is first and foremost a state of mind, an act of

consciousness, which since the French Revolution is becoming more
and more common to mankind. The mental life of man is as much
dominated by an ego-consciousness as it is by a group-conscious-
ness. Both are complex states of mind at which we arrive by ex-

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1009

periences of differentiation and opposition, of the ego and the

surrounding world, of the we-group and those outside the group.
The collective or group consciousness can center around entirely
different groups, of which some have a more permanent character,
like the family, the class, the clan, the caste, the village, the sect,
the religion, etc., whereas others are of a more or less passing
character, e.g., schoolmates, a football team, or passengers on a
ship. In each case, varying with its permanence, this group-con-
sciousness will strive toward creating homogeneity within the
group, a conformity and likemindedness which will lead to and
facilitate concerted action. In that sense, we may speak of a group-
mind and a group-action. We may speak of a Catholic mind and
Catholic action, of an English mind and English action, but we may
also speak of a rural mind or an urban mind, and of action of rural
groups or urban groups. All these groups develop their group char-
acter. The character of an occupational group, as peasants, soldiers,
civil servants, may be as clearly defined and stable as, or even more
than, any character of a national group. Each group creates its
own symbols and social conventions, is dominated by social tradi-
tions, which find their expression in the public opinion of the group.
Group consciousness is never exclusive. Men find themselves
members of different groups at the same time. With the growth
of the complexity of civilization, the number of groups of which
men find themselves a part generally increases. These groups are
not fixed. They have changing limits, and they are of changing
importance. Within these pluralistic, and sometimes conflicting,
kinds of group-consciousness there is generally one which is recog-
nized by a man as the supreme and most important, to which
therefore, in the case of conflict of group-loyalties, he owes supreme
loyalty. He identifies himself with the group and its existence,
frequently not only for the span of his life, but for the continuity
of his existence beyond this span. This feeling of solidarity between
the individual and the group may go, at certain times, as far as
complete submergence of the individual in the group. The whole
education of the members of the group is directed toward a com-
mon mental preparedness for common attitudes and common
actions.
In different periods of history, and in different civilizations,
we find different groups to which this supreme loyalty is given.
The modern period of history, which started with the French

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1010 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

Revolution, is characterized by the fact that in this period, and

in this period alone, the nation demands the supreme loyalty of
man, that all men, not only certain individuals or classes, are drawn
into this common loyalty, and that all civilizations which up to
this modern period have followed their own, and frequently widely
different, ways are now dominated more and more by this one
supreme group-consciousness, nationalism.
It is a fact often commented upon that this growth of national-
ism and of national sectionalism happened in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, just at the time when a growth of interna-
tional relations, trade, and communications developed as never
before; that local languages were raised to the dignity of literary
and cultural languages just at the time when it seemed most
desirable to efface all differences of language by the spread of
world languages. This view overlooks the fact that it was this very
growth of nationalism all over the earth, with its awakening of
the masses to participation in political and cultural life, that pre-
pared the way for the closer cultural contacts of all the civilizations
of mankind, now for the first time brought into a common de-
nominator, which at the same time separated and united them.
Nationalism as a group-consciousness is therefore a psychological
and a sociological fact, but any psychological or sociological ex-
planation is insufficient. An American psychologist defined a nation
as "a group of individuals that feels itself one, is ready within
limits to sacrifice the individual for the group advantage, that
prospers as a whole, that has groups of emotions experienced as a
whole, each of whom rejoices with the advancement and suffers
with the losses of the group . . . Nationality is a mental state or
community in behavior." This definition is valid, as far as it goes,
not only for the nation, but for any other supreme group to which
man owes loyalty and with which he identifies himself. It is there-
fore not sufficient to distinguish the national group from other
groups of similar importance and prominence.
Nationalities are the product of the historical development of
society. They are not identical with clans, tribes, or folk-groups-
groups of men united by actual or supposed common descent or by
a common habitat. Ethnographic groups like these existed through-
out history, from earliest times on; yet they do not form nationali-

3 W. B. Pillsbury, The Psychology of Nationality and Internationalism (New

York, 1919), p. 5. The last chapter of this book is especially worthy of attention.

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1011

ties; they are nothing but "ethnographic material," out of which,

under certain circumstances, a nationality might arise. Even if a
nationality arises, it may disappear again, absorbed in a larger or
new nationality. Nationalities are products of the living forces
of history, and therefore always fluctuating, never rigid. Nationali-
ties are groups of very recent origin, and therefore of utmost
complexity. They defy exact definition. Nationality is an historical
and a political concept, and the meaning of the words "nation"
and "nationality" has undergone many changes. The words used
before the nineteenth century denoted something very different
from the modern meanings in the age of nationalism. It is only
in recent history that man started to regard nationality as a center
of his political and cultural activity and life. Nationality is there-
fore nothing absolute, and the greatest mistake, responsible for
most of the extremities of today, is to make it an absolute, an
objective a priori which is a source of all political and cultural
life.
Nationality has been raised to an absolute by two fictitious
concepts which have been accepted as having real substance. One
holds that blood or race is the basis of nationality, and that it
exists eternally and carries with it an unchangeable inheritance;
the other sees the Volksgeist as an ever-quelling source of nation-
ality and all its manifestations. These theories offer no real explana-
tion of the rise and the r6le of nationality; they refer us to mythical,
pre-historical pseudo-realities. Rather, they must be taken as char-
acteristic elements of thought in the age of nationalism, and are
subject themselves to analysis by the historian of nationalism.

III

Nationalities come into existence only when certain objective

bonds delimit a social group. These bonds are most frequently
used for the definition of nationality. None, however, is essential
for the existence of a nationality. A nationality generally possesses
several of these attributes; very few possess all of them. Usually,
the following attributes are enumerated: common descent, lan-
guage, territory, political entity, customs and traditions, and re-
ligion. A short discussion will suffice to show that none of these
attributes is essential for the existence or definition of nationality.
Common descent seemed of great importance to primitive man,
for whom birth was as great a mystery as death, and therefore

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1012 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

surrounded by legends and superstitions. Most modern nationali-

ties, however, are mixtures of different, and sometimes even very
distant, races. The great migratory movements of history and the
mobility of modern life have led everywhere to an intermingling,
so that few if any nationalities can at present claim anything ap-
proaching common descent.
The importance of language for the formation and life of a
nationality was stressed by Herder and Fichte. But there are many
nationalities that have no language of their own, as the Swiss,
who speak four different languages, or the Latin American nation-
alities, all of which speak Spanish or Portuguese. The English-
speaking nations-Great Britain, the United States, Canada-or
the Spanish-speaking nations of Latin America, are mostly of com-
mon or similar descent, speak the same language, and had until
quite recently the same historical background, also traditions and
customs very much akin to each other; yet they represent different
nationalities, with frequently conflicting aspirations. Another ex-
ample of the comparative irrelevance of objective criteria for their
formation and continued existence is to be found in Norway and
Denmark, where the people are most probably of common racial
stock and speak almost the same language. Nevertheless, they
consider themselves two nationalities, and the Norwegians set up
their own language only as the result of their having become a
nationality.
Customs and traditions were first stressed in their importance
for nationalities by Rousseau. Each nation undoubtedly possesses
its customs, traditions, and institutions; but these often vary
greatly from locality to locality, and on the other hand tend in our
times to become standardized all over the world, or at least over
large areas. Customs and manners nowadays often change with
great rapidity.
Religion was a great dominating force before the rise of national-
ism in modern times. This is true of Western as well as Eastern
Christianity, of Islam, and of India. The dividing lines were not
drawn according to nationalities. Therefore the rise of nationalities
and of nationalism was accompanied by transformations in the
religious attitude of men, and in many ways the growth of nation-
alities has been helped or hindered by the influence of religion.
Religious differences sometimes divided and weakened nationali-
ties, and even helped to create new nationalities, as in the case of

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1013

the Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs. On the other hand,
national churches have frequently been an important element in
helping to arouse nationalism; and when conflicting nationalities
were of different religions, religion often played a large part in the
defense mechanism of the weaker nationality, as did Catholicism
in Ireland and in Prussian Poland.
The most important outward factor in the formation of nation-
alities is a common territory, or rather the state. Political frontiers
tend to establish nationalities. Many new nationalities, like the
Canadian, were formed entirely because they comprised a political
and geographic entity. Generally we may say, for reasons which
will be considered later, that statehood or nationhood (in the gen-
erally accepted sense of common citizenship under one territorial
government) is a constitutive element in the life of a nationality.
The condition of statehood need not be p-esent when a nationality
originates, but in such a case (as with the Czechs in the late eigh-
teenth century) it is always the memory of a past state and the
aspiration toward statehood that characterizes nationalities in the
period of nationalism.
Although it may be said in conclusion that some of these objec-
tive factors are of great importance for the formation of nationali-
ties, the most essential element is a living and active corporate
will. Nationality is formed by the decision to form a nationality.
Thus the French nationality was born of the enthusiastic mani-
festation of will in 1789. A French nation, the population of the
French kingdom, existed before, as also existed some of the objec-
tive conditions necessary for the formation of a nationality. But
only the newly aroused consciousness and will made these elements
active and effective, fused them into a source of immense centripe-
tal power, and gave them a new importance and meaning. The
English and American nationalities were constituted by covenants,
by free acts of will, and the French Revolution evolved the plebis-
cite as a result of which membership in a nationality was deter-
mined, not by objective characteristics, but by subjective declara-
tion. The foundation of the Swiss nationality was dramatized by
Friedrich Schiller, in his Wilhelm Tell according to legendary tra-
dition, into the famous oath on the Rutli: "Wir wollen sein ein
einig Volk von BrUdern." This mythical declaration, "we wish to
be one single nation of brothers," was uttered at the birth of every
nationality, be it that this birth happened, after a long pregnancy,

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1014 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

in the enthusiasm of a revolutionary period, or be it that the awak-

ening of the masses took many years of ceaseless propaganda.
Nationalities as "ethnographic material," as "pragmatic" and ac-
cidental factors in history, existed for a very long time; but only
through the awakening of national consciousness did they become
volitional and "absolute" factors in history. The extensive use of
the word "nationality" must not blind us to the fact that the lack
of this voluntary element makes what are sometimes called nation-
alities before the rise of modern nationalism something funda-
mentally different from nationalities at the present time. To base
nationality upon "objective" factors like race implies a return to
primitive tribalism. In modern times, it was the power of an idea,
not the call of blood, that constituted and molded nationalities.
Nationalities are created out of ethnographic and political ele-
ments by nationalism breathing life into the form built by preced-
ing centuries. Thus nationalism and nationality are closely inter-
related. Nationalism is a state of mind, permeating the large
majority of a people and claiming to permeate all its members,
which recognizes the nation-state as the ideal form of political
organization and the nationality as the source of all creative cul-
tural energy and of economic well-being. The supreme loyalty of
man is therefore due to his nationality, as his own life is supposedly
rooted in and made possible by its welfare. A short discussion of
the components of this definition will help to clarify the issues
involved.
A state of mind of the large majority of the people: Even before the
age of nationalism, we find individuals who profess sentiments
very much akin to nationalism. But these sentiments are confined
to individuals; the masses never feel their own life, culturally,
politically, or economically, dependent upon the fate of the na-
tional group. Periods of oppression or danger from the outside
may arouse in the masses a feeling of nationalism, as happened in
Greece during the Persian wars and in France during the Hundred
Years' War. But these sentiments pass quickly. As a rule, wars
before the French Revolution did not arouse a deep national senti-
ment. In religious and dynastic wars, Germans fought against
Germans and Italians against Italians without any realization of
the "fratricidal" nature of the act. Soldiers and civilians entered
the services of "foreign" rulers and served them, often with a

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1015

loyalty and faithfulness which proved the absence of any national

sentiment.
The nation-state as the ideal form of political organization: That
political boundaries coincide with ethnographic or linguistic fron-
tiers is a demand of recent times. Formerly, the city or the fief or
a multi-lingual state held together by dynastic ties was the ac-
cepted form of political organization, and frequently was regarded
as the "natural" or ideal form. At other periods, the educated
classes as well as the masses believed in the ideal of a universal
world-state, although on account of the technical and geographic
conditions this ideal never approached realization.
The nationality as the source of cultural life: During most of his-
torical time, religion was regarded as the true source of cultural
life. Man was thought to become creative by his profound immer-
sion in religious tradition and by his abandonment into the divine
fountain-head of all being. At other times, the basis of man's edu-
cation was steeped in the civilization of a class which spread beyond
all national boundaries, like the civilization of knighthood in
mediaeval Europe or of the French court in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. During and after the Renaissance, man's
education was rooted in the soil of classical civilization. Education
and learning, the formation of man's mind and character, were not
bound by any national limits.
The nationality as a source of economic well-being: This phase of
nationalism was, as well as the political, prepared by the period of
absolute monarchy, with its mercantilism. But mercantilism never
became more than a scheme imposed from above, trying to achieve
a national unity which it in reality never approached, continuing
in many ways the mediaeval confusion and disruption of economic
life and leaving provinces, cities, and villages as centers of economic
life. The purpose of mercantilism was to strengthen the state and
its power in international politics. The system following mercan-
tilism, in the period of laissez-faire, had as its aim the promotion of
individual welfare. Economic nationalism brought about a neo-
mercantilism, filling with life, as had been the case with the cen-
tralized state, the form erected by the monarchs. It is a much
younger development than political or cultural nationalism, and it
believes that the well-being of the individual can be achieved and
secured only by the economic power of the nation. The close politi-

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1016 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

cal and cultural identification of the individual

which took place at the end of the eighteenth a
nineteenth century, extended to the economic field during the
latter part of the nineteenth century.
The supreme loyalty due to the nationality: The Austrian mon-
archy was generally accepted as long as man's supreme loyalty
was due to the legitimate king; its existence became precarious
with the shift of loyalty from the dynasty to the nationality. Only
a very few centuries ago, man's loyalty was due to his church or
religion; a heretic put himself out of the pale of society in the same
way that a "traitor" to his nation does today. The fixation of man's
supreme loyalty upon his nationality marks the beginning of the
age of nationalism.
IV

Nationalism is a state of mind. The process of history can be

analyzed as a succession of changes in communal psychology, in
the attitude of man toward all manifestations of individual and
social life. Such factors as language, territory, traditions-such
sentiments as attachment to the native soil, the Heimat, and to
one's kin and kind-assume different positions in the scale of
values as communal psychology changes. Nationalism is an idea,
an idde-force, which fills man's brain and heart with new thoughts
and new sentiments, and drives him to translate his consciousnes
into deeds of organized action. Nationality is therefore not only a
group held together and animated by common consciousness; it
also seeks to find its expression in what it regards as the highest
form of organized activity, a sovereign state. As long as nationality
is not able to attain this consummation, it satisfies itself with some
form of autonomy or pre-state organization, which, however, al-
ways tends at a given moment, the moment of "liberation," to de-
velop into a sovereign state. Nationalism demands the nation-
state; the creation of the nation-state strengthens nationalism;
here, as elsewhere in history, we find a continuous interdependence
and interaction.
"Nationality is a state of mind corresponding to a political
fact,"4 or striving to correspond to a political fact. This definition
Israel Zangwill, The Principle of Nationalities (London, 1917), p. 39. Max
Weber defines nationality as "a common bond of sentiment whose adequate expres-
sion would be a state of its own, and which therefore normally tends to give birth
to such a state." Verhandlungen des Zweiten Deutschen Soziologentages (Tuibingen,
1913), p. 50.

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1017

reflects the genesis of nationalism and of modern nationality.

Modern nationality was born in the fusion of a certain state of
mind with a certain political form. The state of mind, the idea of
nationalism, imbued the form with a new content and meaning;
the form provided the idea with the implements for the organized
expression of its manifestations and aspirations. The idea and the
form of nationalism were developed before the age of nationalism.
The idea goes back to the ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and was
revived in Europe at the time of the Renaissance and the Reforma-
tion. During the period of the Renaissance, the literati rediscov-
ered Greco-Roman patriotism, but this new attitude never pene-
trated to the masses, and its secularism was soon swept away by
the re-theologization of Europe through the Reformation and
Counter-Reformation. But the Reformation, especially in its Cal-
vinistic form, revived the nationalism of the Old Testament. Under
the favorable circumstances which had developed in England, a
new national consciousness of England as the godly people pene-
trated the whole nation in the revolution of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Meanwhile a new political power-that of the absolute kings
-had developed a new political form, the modern centralized
sovereign state, which became the political form into which, dur-
ing the French Revolution, the idea of nationalism was infused,
thus filling that form with a consciousness in which all citizens
could share, and making possible the political and cultural integra-
tion of the masses in the nation. With the advent of nationalism,
the masses were no longer in the nation, but of the nation. They
identified themselves with the state, civilization with national
civilization, their life and survival with the life and survival of
the nationality. Nationalism thenceforward dominated the im-
pulses and attitudes of the masses, and at the same time served as
the justification for the authority of the state and the legitimation
of its use of force, both against its own citizens and against other
states.
Sovereignty has a two-fold significance. One aspect has to do with
the relations of the state to its citizens, the other with the relations
between state and state. Similarly, the sentiment of nationalism is
double-faced. Intranationally, it leads to a lively sympathy with
all fellow-members within the nationality; internationally, it finds
its expression in indifference to or distrust and hate of fellowmen
outside the national orbit. In intranational relations, men are

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1018 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

guided not only by supposedly permanent common interests, but

also by sentiments of sympathy, devotion, and even self-sacrifice,
which the whole tends to intensify. In their international relations,
they are guided by the supposed lack of permanent common inter-
ests between different states and by sentiments which vary from
the point of complete indifference to the most bitter antipathy, and
are subject to swift changes within that range. Nationality, which
is nothing but a fragment of humanity, tends to set itself up as the
whole.5 Generally this ultimate conclusion is not drawn, because
ideas pre-dating the age of nationalism continue to exercise their
influence. These ideas form the essence of Western civilization, of
Christianity as well as of enlightened rationalism, the faith in the
oneness of humanity and the ultimate value of the individual. Only
fascism, the uncompromising enemy of Western civilization, has
pushed nationalism to its very limit, to a totalitarian nationalism
in which humanity and the individual disappear and nothing re-
mains but the nationality, having become the one and the whole.

Important periods of history are characterized by the circum-

ference within which the sympathy of man extends. These limits
are neither fixed nor permanent, and changes in them are accom-
panied by great crises. In the Middle Ages, the people of the Ile
de France felt a violent antipathy and contempt for the people of
Aquitaine or of Burgundy. A very short time ago, a similar feeling
existed in Egypt between the Mohammedans and the Copts, or
native Christians. In ancient times, the Athenians hated and de-
spised the Spartans. Almost unscalable barriers separated members
of rival religious sects within a community. In China, until very
recently, the family set the limit of sympathy, and very little if
any loyalty and devotion were left for the nation or larger social
group.
Beginning with the nineteenth century in the Western world,
with the twentieth century in the Orient, the circumference was
set by the nationality. These changes involved in many cases the
establishment of new dividing lines. This grouping of men into

5"The spirit of nationality may be defined (negatively but not inaccurately)

as a spirit which makes people feel and act and think about a part of any given
society as though it were the whole of that society." Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study
of History (London, 1934), Vol. 1, p. 9,

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1019

new forms of organization, their integration around new symbols,

gained a momentum unknown in former days. The rapid growth
of population, the spread of education, the increased influence of
the masses, the new techniques developed for information and
propaganda, gave the new feeling of nationality a permanent in-
tensity which soon made it appear the expression of something
"natural," of something which had always existed and would
always exist. But there is no assurance that the circumference of
sympathy will forever remain drawn as it is today. With the trans-
formation of social and economic life, with the growing interde-
pendence of all nationalities, on a shrinking earth, with a new
direction to education, the circumference may widen to include
supranational areas of common interest and common sympathy.
Such an extension of solidarity, should it come, will arise only
as the result of a struggle of unprecedented dimensions. For na-
tionalism represents "vested interests," not only political and eco-
nomic, but also intellectual and emotional, of an intensity and
extensity shown by no previous idea. In the face of the omnipo-
tence of nationality, humanity seems a distant idea, a pale theory
or a poetic dream, through which the red blood of life does not
pulsate. And so it is. But at one time in history the French or the
German nation was also nothing more than a dim idea. Historical
forces, amid great struggles and convulsions lasting for a long
period, brought these ideas to life. An organization of mankind was
a utopia in the eighteenth century; the stage of development of
state and economy, of technique and communication, was in no
way adequate at that time to the task. It is far different today. At
the present time, the sovereignty of nation-states to which we still
cling threatens to plunge mankind into repeated catastrophes;
nationalism, at its beginning a great and inspiring force, widening
and deepening the understanding of man, the feeling of solidarity,
the autonomous dignity of the masses, seems unable to cope with
the new situation. Once it increased individual liberty and hap-
piness; now it undermines them and subjects them to the exigencie
of its continued existence, which is no longer justified. Once it was
a great force of life spurring on the evolution of mankind; now it
threatens to become a dead weight upon the march of humanity.
The German or the French nation is, no more than the American
nation, an entity predestined by nature. They, as well as the na-
tional consciousness which animates them, are formed by historical

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1020 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW

forces. The growth of the German national consciousness, the for-

mation of the German national state, encountered innumerable
difficulties, and was again and again in danger of being wrecked
on the cliffs of political vested interests, or of the inertia of tradi-
tions and of ingrained sectionalism and provincialism. The pioneers
of nationalism were compelled many times to despair of achieving
their goal. But nationalism was victorious. It was then a progres-
sive principle, a great liberating force, filling the heart of man with
great hope of a new freedom and of better and more humane rela-
tions between peoples. This has changed. "Political nationalism is
under present conditions, and in so far as it aims at the creation of
a multitude of uninational states, impossible. It is also undesirable.
It conflicts with the main trends of human affairs, which are away
from isolation towards interdependence. Nationalism is in politics
a bitterly reactionary thing. Its aim is not service and cooperation,
but exclusiveness and monopoly. The world needs, not more tariff
walls and fortress-barriers, but fewer. The political problem of our
day is two-fold. We have, on the one hand, to secure democracy,
self-government; on the other, administrative areas which corre-
spond to the social needs of our civilization."'
This criticism may be accepted today by a growing number of
people. But nationalism is more strongly entrenched at present
than it was a short time ago. The nation-state is more deep-rooted
in the emotions of the masses than any previous political organi-
zation. The growth of nationalism has influenced historiography
and the philosophy of history, and each nation has developed its
own interpretation of history which not only makes it feel itself
different from all other nationalities, but gives to this difference a
fundamental, and even metaphysical, meaning. The nationality
feels itself chosen for some special mission, and the realization of
this mission essential to the march of history, and even to the sal-
vation of mankind. By the identification of nation and state, for
which the modern basis was prepared by Rousseau, the cultural
and emotional life of the masses has become closely integrated with
the political life. Any change of the principles of political organiza-
tion will therefore encounter the strongest resistance, which will
not take into account considerations of the rational and universal
good, but will appeal to the vested traditions.

? Sidney Herbert, Nationality and Its Problems (London, 1920), p. 161.

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 THE NATURE OF NATIONALISM 1021

Sociologists have pointed out the intimate relation between

national and religious movements. Both have an inspirational, and
sometimes revivalist, character. "Both of them are fundamentally
cultural movements with incidental political consequences."7 We
should not, however, term the political consequences incidental;
rather, they have been conditioned by the stages of historical de-
velopment. At a given time in history, religion, essentially a spirit-
ual movement, had very fundamental and substantial political
implications. Religion dominated politics. At the present time, the
same is true of nationalism. When interminable and ferocious re-
ligious wars threatened to destroy human happiness and civiliza-
tion, the movement of Enlightenment, the wave of rationalism
which started about 1680 and dominated the eighteenth century,
led to the depolitization of religion. By this process, religion did
not lose its true dignity; it remained one of the great spiritual
forces, comforting and exalting the human soul. It lost the element
of coercion which had been so "natural" to it for many centuries;
its connection with the state, with political authority, was severed;
religion retreated into the intimacy and spontaneity of the indi-
vidual conscience. The process of the depolitization of religion was
slow. Two centuries from "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for
Cause of Conscience Discussed in a Conference between Truth and
Peace," published by Roger Williams in 1644, had to elapse before,
at least in Western Europe, its consequences won general accept-
ance. A similar depolitization of nationality is conceivable. It
may lose its connection with political organization, and remain
only as an intimate and moving sentiment. If and when that day
arrives, however, the age of nationalism, in the sense in which the
term is here employed, will be past.

7 Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology

(Chicago, 1924), p. 931.

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