Twentieth Century Currents:
"Race" and "Nation," across the World Wars

Part Two: "Nation"

Introduction

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace, you

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

This well known song, "Imagine" by John Lennon (1971), wouldn't appeal to Slobadan Milosevic, Serbian president of Yugoslavia in 1999, nor would it have a appealed to Gavrilo Princip, Serbian nationalist who assassinated Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. Nevertheless, the philosophy, to "imagine there's no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for and no religion too," is a sort of nationalism, or supranationalism, because people can associate with it and it can be perceived as a threat to one's national identity. There are people in the U.S. who collect arms in fear of such a movement.

From the time of  the French and American Revolutions to the current war in Kosova, millions of people have died fighting for ideas embodied in the term 'nation.' Yet, historians and social scientists still debate the relevance of the term in the twentieth century and how have much significance for the twenty-first century. E.J. Hobsbawm, Professor of History at the University of London at London Birbeck College, and author of Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality, (Cambridge: 1990), and Anthony D. Smith, Professor of Ethnicity and Nationalism in the European Institute at the London School of Economics and author of Nationalism and Modernism (Routledge: 1998), represent at two camps in the debate. Hobsbawm argues that since developments after the First World War, the terms, 'nation' and 'nationalism,' have proven to be of minor  relevance in world history, and are hardly usable for analyzing regional conflicts. Smith, on the other hand, argues that the nation and related nationalism was, is, and will continue to be, a major force in world history, and a useful theoretical construct for analyzing human societies throughout history.

Smith's "Ethno-Symbolic" Nation

Hobsbawm notes in his recent book, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, that Smith is "the main guide for readers of this field in the English language" (footnote#2, p.2), so let's begin with Smith's outline of the developments and then look at Hobsbawm's before applying their theories to analyzing two cases: Serbia and Kosova, and the American homefront during the First World War, when the currents of nationalism are said to have transformed.

In his Nationalism and Modernism, Smith reviews the classic, modern, and postmodern uses of  the terms, pointing to their historical premises and downfalls.

Classic: the nation is 'an inclusive and liberating force' during the American and French Revolutions in the revolts against the monarchs of Europe. Even in its initial usage, people debated whether or not the nation should exist as an ideal form of democratic representation, as an end in itself, or as a means to other ends, depending on the economic necessities of the time. The epitome of this debate comes in the thought of  Heinrich Treitschke, a German historian of militaristic bent and Ernest Renan, a French Historian, and classic Liberal. The latter's definition is often quoted:

a soul, a spiritual principle. . . . A nation is a great solidarity, created by the sentiment of sacrifices which have been made and of those which one is disposed to make in the future. It presupposes a past; but it resumes itself in the present by a tangible fact: the consent, the clearly expressed desire to continue life in common. The existence of a nation is a plebicide of every day, as the existence of the individual is a perpetual affirmation of life. (1882) (quoted in Smith, p.10)

Modern: After the Second Industrial Revolution and the rise of America, France, and Germany in the world (colonial) economies, the nation and nationalism took on more racial connotations which helped to justify domination over peoples in lands colonized or annexed by the industrial powers. This was the era that began with Darwin's Origin of Species publication in 1859, and ended with the extreme racial fascism of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan of the Second World War. Consequently, the debate surrounding the nation during this era centers on anthropological and political grounds. During the First World War, concepts such as 'organic racial nations,' founded on ethnic and linguistic grounds, formed the arguments of many pursuing the war's ends. The rejection at the Paris Peace Conference of  Wilson's global principles of democratic self-determination as well as Japan's request for a racial equality clause shows that the imperialistic view of nations was still predominant. Extreme forms of exclusionary, militaristic nationalism, and fascism spawned in national institutions formed during the First World War and helped push the industrialized world into the next World War. After the war a new phase of modern, political nationalism arose on the wave of the modernization theories of the Cold War. The U.S. and the Soviet Union each promoted their versions of the modern-nation building plan.

Post-Modern: Since the failure of many modernization plans promoted by the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and then the breakup of the Soviet Union, the nation became a misnomer to many analysts. Nationally-controlled industries failed to compete in the world economy, and national politics could not adequately represent the diversity of interests in the nation.

Smith places Hobsbawm in two camps, the Modernist and the Post-Modernist. The Modernist because he argues that something will replace nationalism in the next phase of history, and the Post-Modernist because of Hobsbawm's deconstruction and reconstruction of national identities in history by analyzing the power relationships involved.1

Smith criticizes Hobsbawm, et.a., for putting the cart before the horse in saying that the modern concept of nationalism comes before the creation of modern nations. Hobsbawm and Anderson, by focusing almost solely on state-directed roles in creating, or 'inventing' national traditions, forget to give credit to the people. Smith and his less known camp of 'perennialists' and 'ethno-symbolists,' argue that there are 'ethno-symbols' which foreshadow the modern nation over the long duree. Smith contends that the nation is a cyclic, or perennial, phenomena in which the cultural combines with the civic both vertically and laterally in creating and recreating national symbols and political frameworks. Current national movements and revolutions can be better understood with a thorough analysis of  recurring symbols in the nation, manifest culturally and civically.

Hobsbawm's Modern Nation

Hobsbawm contends that in world history, the nation, or the political association a majority of inhabitants of a territory, is a purely modern phenomena, and has little to do with a root ethnicity. Hobsbawm goes at length in his book, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, to show that pre-modern and modern nations have a wide range of ethnic identities, and it is only recently in modernity, through mass media and education have begun to attempt homogenize, or nationalize the populous at large. France and Italy are cases in point. Only in the late nineteenth century, when world technological and economic conditions require it, did language standards come to be taught in public education. But nations really took shape during and after the First World War when modern institutions created corresponding national cultures, in the histories and myths they purported. At the end of the twentieth century, after two world wars and further technological revolutions, the information age has made the 'machinery' of nation-building obsolete. Hobsbawm concludes that the demands for multiple identity in the global economy is creating new forms of transnational and global association that will put an end to nationalism altogether.

Interpreting the nation across the World Wars

Although different, Smith and Hobsbawm's theories offer complimentary tools for analyzing of the significance of nationalism in the First World War and its aftermath. Serbia is a good case to apply their theories because it appears to exemplify Smith's view of primordial nationalism persisting throughout the twentieth century.

Serbia

Most history books tell us that the First World War began on June 28th, 1914, when Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914. Six years earlier, Austria-Hungary had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina in fear that they would loose territory resulting from the instability of the Ottoman Empire. Applying Hobsbawm's view, one could interpret these events as all pure politics between the imperial powers of the age. The Serbian nationalist movement was significant only in that it was an avenue for Russia to get more control of the Balkans. Applying Smith's view one could agree to a certain extent, one would add that the shared Byzantine/Russian Orthodox heritage helped cement these ties with Russia even further and increased the likelihood of a concerted response to Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had an almost pure ethnic-Serb population at the time. Hobsbawm's line of thinking might follow that the main cause of the First World War, and even the NATO response to Serbian "ethnic cleansing" at the end of the century, is another geo-political move by Western Europe protecting interests in the Balkan by maintaining current borders. Russia, on the other hand, is trying to hold on to every traditional ally it has to keep an advantage in the Balkan region. The Smith perspective would place more emphasis on the long tradition of shared heritage with Serbia.

The Serbia-Russia connection is certainly a combination of both geo-politic and popular, ethnically rooted, albeit cultivated support.

Serbia's argument for controlling Kosova is couched in ethno-symbolic terms. Here is the History page taken from Serbia's Ministry of Information site on Kosova at http://www.serbia-info.com/news/kosovo/facts/history.html (highlighting my own):

History

The Serbs have been living in the territory of Kosova and Metohija since the 6th century. That territory is of exceptional importance for the Serbian history and for the cultural-civilizational identity of Serbia - it was the centre of the Serbian statehood and it is important for the Serbs just as the Wailing Wall is important for the Jews. Many Serbian cultural monuments are situated in Kosovo and Metohija (200 medieval churches). There are no historical data saying that the Albanians populated that territory in the Medieval Ages. The Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija are mainly of Islamic religion, with a small number of Roman Catholics. The question of Kosovo is not only a question of territory or of the number of Serbian or Albanian population: it is an inalienable national treasury, indispensable for the identity of the Serbian people.

Kosovo and Metohija was the least developed region until the Second World War. Thanks to enormous investments of Serbia and Yugoslavia after the Second World War, an important prosperity was achieved in industry, agriculture and in social activities.

The political and terroristfs activities of the present separatists, members of the Albanian national minority in Kosovo and Metohija, follows consistently the project of the Prizren Ligue from 1878, which envisaged the unification of all, Albanians (from Albania, Greece, Macedonia and FRY) and the creation of Great Albania. This programme of unification is still a generally accepted national ideal and political objective of the Albanian extremists.

Over past several decades, the Albanians from Yugoslavia, Greece, and, recently, from Macedonia, present themselves to the world as the "part of the nation in jeopardy" and try to prove the "injustice" for, according to the Albanian interpretation, "one half of the Albanian ethnic territories" was left outside the borders of Albania.

Hobsbawm might hold this state promoted story as another example of  'state invention,' or an 'imagined community'. Smith would say that there is more interplay between the Serbian people and the state than modernists usually give credit.

The Kosovo-Albanians  have their own version of history that gives them ethno-linguistic rights to the territory. Here is an excerpt from sixteen pages of historical-ethno-linguistic roots in the Kosova territory, by the Albanian Liberation Peace Movement, alias Albanian Liberation Army, ALA, http://www.klpm.org/question.htm :

A series of historical events, described by the Greek and Roman writers, centuries ago, apply to the current conditions, in such a way, as to make one imagine that the old writings are contemporary history. It is those events, then and now, that have forced the Albanians to cling with tenacity to their national traditions, language, and customs.

More than a thousand years before the arrival of Slavs, in the sixth century A.D. , the lands east of the Adriatic were the home of peoples known to the ancient world as Illyrians, the precursors of the present Albanians. The Illyrian territory comprised much of what is now inhabited by the Yugoslavs and Albanians. The Illyrian territory comprised the river of Danube in the north, the Adriatic in the west, the Gulf of Ambrakia (Greece) in the south, the Lakeland basin Scupi (Skopje) and the Kosova region in the east. The ancient districts of Calabria and Appulia in southern Italy were included.

The Illyrians had close interrelationship with the Greeks. Being the most ancient people in the region, they shared many old customs and traditions. The Greek colonies, along the coast of the Adriatic, played a great role in the infusion of the Greek civilization into the Illyrian hinterland. For nearly three millennia, except for the present chauvinistic-shadowed century, these two original neighbors have never been in conflict with each other.

The earliest information about the Illyrians can be found in Homer. In the fourteenth book of Iliad, The Paeonians, an Illyrian tribe, are quoted as horsemen who came "from their fertile regions, under the leadership of Asteroups", and took part in the Trojan War. According to Homer, Ulysses landed on the fertile coasts of the Illyrian tribe of Thesprotians. On his return from Troy, Ulysses was welcomed by Phaeton, their generous and heroic king. The Illyrians were also related to the Macedonians. The mother of Alexander the Great was an Illyrian princess from Epirus. According to Strabofs Geography, the Greek tradition identified the Illyrians as an ethnos different from Macedonians and Thracians, as well as from the Greeks. They spoke a language, of which no trace has survived. This language belonged to the "family" of Indo-European languages, as shown from the many names of Illyrian peoples and places preserved in Greek and Roman records, both literally and epigraphically. The Greeks had a word for speaking of the Illyrians, "illurizein", and recognized this language as distinct from Greek. The Albanian language of today is entirely distinct from the tongues spoken by the neighboring nationalities. This language is particularly interesting for it is the only surviving representative of the Illyrian group of languages, which formed the primitive speech of the inhabitants in the Balkan Peninsula. In the course of time, the Albanian language has been impregnated by a number of foreign words, mainly of Greek and Latin origin, which are younger than the Albanian language.

The Albanian language is the best available means for a rational explanation of the meaning of names of the ancient Greek gods, as well as the rest of the mythological creations. The Homeric poems abound in words that have survived in the spoken Albanian language. According to the German scholars, who laid the foundations of the Albanian studies in the 19th century, the present day Albanian language represents the latest phase of the old Illyrian language or more precisely, Illyrian dialect. The current version of the theory of the Albanians origin, is centered on the unbroken descend of modern Albanians from the Illyrian people, formed in the Bronze Age. Geographically, it coincides with the territory inhabited presently by the Albanians.

The Kosovo-Albanian appeal covers the whole ethno-symbolic, and modernist precedent set just before and after the First World War (highlighting my own):

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In the Autumn of 1912, the Balkan states formed an alliance against Turkey, and the First Balkan War began. Within a month, the armies of Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece penetrated deep into the Albanian territories. Delegations from all over the country met at a National Congress in the town of Vlora (southern Albania) and, on November 28, 1912, proclaimed the independence of Albania. Unfortunately, it could not stop the second division of Albania, taking place less than three decades from the former one. The London Conference of the six European powers was held in 1913. It gave Serbia the whole of Kosova and Macedonia, predominantly populated by the Albanians. Montenegro was again enlarged at the expense of northwestern Albania. Greece was given a considerable portion of southern Albania. More than two thirds of Albaniafs territory was detached from its trunk. Kosova (the Illyrian Dardania), the cradle of the Albanization, was still left under foreign yoke. Serbia, at this time, decided to abolish the oldest language of the Balkan region and all of Europe. The Illyrian-Albanian language was prohibited to be used in public, by people who spoke it, tens of centuries before.

In 1919, international plans for a third division of Albania were being discussed at the Versailles Conference. An Albanian delegation was invited and attended. They vigorously opposed the redivision of their country. Fortunately, for the first time, the United States participated in the international decision-making process of the Balkan region. At that time, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, established the principle of self-determination for nations, and he was a strong advocate for this principle, thus backing the Albanian interests. A delegation of American citizens of Albanian heritage traveled to Paris, and attended the Versailles Conference under the leadership of Bishop Fan Noli. A true believer of democracy, Bishop Fan Noli established the paradigm of democracy in Albania, and became the first democratic Prime Minister of Albania, in the year 1924. Within six months, democracy was overthrown by feudals, backed by the Serb army.

Wilson's principle of self-determination represented a form of  ethnic, not civic, nationalism to Serbs and Albanians then and now. Viewed as a "cradle of Albanization," by the Albanians and the center for Serbian statehood, "like the wailing wall is to the Jews," the conflict in the Kosova region could not be solved by  President Woodrow Wilson's principle of self-determination, nor can it be now, I think. Smith would say that people's inherent need for a national identity, rooted in ethno-symbolic forms, is stronger than mere civic association; and therefore, in the perennial cycles of  interplay between the ethnic and the civic, symbols must take ever creative form to make the nation relevant to the needs of the people. In the final assessment, Serbians and Kosovar-Albanians have irreconcilable ethno-national movements with territorial ambitions that will continue to provoke war for decades to come. However, it is not in Russia's best ethno-national interests (more than geo-political interests), to let Ablanization proceed into Kosovo, so they will try to insure that a shared identity will succeed after the current crisis.

As the Wilsonian ideal of national (apparently ethnic-national) self-determination is still affecting peoples almost a century later, let's turn to the situation on the American homefront during the First World War to see the dynamics that transformed the concept nation into the confusing term it has become at the end of the century.

America

David M. Kennedy's review of the American homefront in Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford: 1980) in chapter one, "The War for the American Mind" documents well the sometimes ironic interplay between the civic and the ethno-symbolic in the perennial transformation of nationalism. Kennedy traces how progressive, Liberal ideals transformed into volatile ethno-symbolic ones during the First World War. Perennial symbols of American ethnicity, or ethnie: the Puritan, the Evangelist, and the Vigilante, a benign force in American Progressivism, resurfaced malignantly in wartime organizations like the Committee on Public Education, National Security League and the National Board for Historical Service; consequently created an ethnic/racial hysteria against Germans and anything German. In the schools, such ethno-revivalism even transformed the French story of Joan of Arc, into one in which the country was overrun with Germans (not the English enemies in the original story). Government-sponsored history high school and college textbooks, portrayed the Germans to fight without regard to the laws of God or man . . . a bestial Hun. Such currents persisted beyond the Paris Peace Conference and continued to affect Western nationalism to the detriment of world peace. Another war was necessary to turn the perennial pendulum between ethnic and civic back in the direction of the liberal civic nationalism. Hobsbawm might add that it was also in the best interests of the world powers during the world cold war to have something to have modern nation-building plans to sell the struggling Third World.

At the end of the twentieth century, what does nationalism mean when schemes for modernization don't work and the global economy appears to be driven by forces that go beyond the now traditional concepts of civic nations? I think that the answer will continue to be more national configurations of all varieties, each creating counter responses from the other, but hopefully, with enough balances through transnational and supranational affiliations to keep the whole earth from blowing up. Our civic identity will inevitably have to include representation in transnational associations like organized labor, the European Community, the G7, and the United Nations to keep the global economy from collapsing from the inadequacy of national representation. And ethnic-symbols of the world's major religions will have to regenerate more relevance to the multi-ethnic, scientific, economic realities of every nation.


Endnotes

  1. Another very important and interesting book that supports the arguments of Hobsbawm is Imagined Communities, by Benedict Anderson (Verso: 1991). back to text

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Part I / First World War Guide  / Teachers' Index