Myths of ancestry

This article examines the national significance of fifth‐century BC Greek sculpture and especially the so‐called Elgin Marbles. It examines the significance of these archaeological remains not for the Greek nation but for the British, and specifically the English, nation during the nineteenth century. The national significance of fifth‐century BC Greek art lies in its incorporation into nineteenth‐century debates concerning the identity of the English nation. At a time when physical appearance or race was accepted as an important and, indeed, determining component of the ‘self’ and a measure of collective belonging, Greek sculpture, which was primarily figural in its subject‐matter, came to be seen as an image of the English ‘self’. The belief in the Greek identity of the English caused a Greek revival in English life and art. In life, this revival took the form of care for the body and the imitation of the athletic practices of Greek youth through the practice of sport in English school and university education. It was thus that nineteenth‐century English youth turned itself into a work of art.     

Of Navies and Navels: Britain as A Mental Island

In this paper, the conception of .Great Britain. — a wholly unsatisfactory nomenclature — as an island nation is examined. In this case, a relatively small land mass acted as an originary point of departure for outward‐bound Great Power projections across the open spaces of seas. This paper further explores the varied implications for nationalism within Britain of the diverse island ‘roots’ of the British navel and the ‘routes’ of British navalism. Three themes recur in the popular mobilization of British maritime island nationalism: the besieged island, the island as universal exemplar of civilization, and the navy as national protector. Some consideration is given to the significance of island symbols such as Britannia as a marker of the fate of great island nationalism.     

Empire‐nation: national and imperial discourses in England

When the states of England and Scotland combined in 1707, conditions were created whereby English nationalism could merge into British nationalism. With the expansion of empire, English nationalism was expressed through imperial‐national discourses allowing English nationalists to claim non‐English space when articulating what might be best understood as an Anglo‐British nationalism. Accordingly, such discourses largely ‘hid’ what one might now understand as ‘English nationalism’ within a ‘British’ discourse of empire. The case of England illustrates that imperial discourses can become intimately bound up with the ‘national’ discourse of the nations at the core of the imperial structures. Accordingly, it is here argued that imperial and national discourse are not necessarily opposed to each other, but are able to feed into each other, affecting the manner in which ideas of the nation and empire are conceived and articulated.     

Romantic Scotland,tragic England,ambiguous Britain: constructions of ‘the Empire’ in post‐devolution national accounting

ABSTRACT. This article compares the ways in which references to ‘the (British) Empire’ were constructed and used in interview accounts of national identity and domestic politics in Scotland and in England. In Scotland, spontaneous accounts of Empire were typically formulated in conjunction with nationalist moral meta‐narratives. Respondents variously inferred heroic national character from Scotland's role in Empire, or cast Scottish history as an enduring struggle between progressive forces of nationalism and atavistic forces of Anglo‐British colonialism. The construct of Britishness was often seen to derive from, and to be synonymous with, the history of Empire. In England, the Empire story tended to be framed within anti‐nationalist meta‐narratives. Imperialism was generally understood to represent a product of excessive nationalism, and tales of Empire were used to draw exemplary moral lessons concerning the deficiencies of Anglo‐British national character and of the catastrophic consequences of the pursuit of national self‐interest more generally. The existence of Britain, and the construct of Britishness, were generally understood to both predate and postdate the history of Empire.     

Ethno‐traditional nationalism and the challenge of immigration

The rise of the populist right in the West is emerging as the most discussed manifestation of nationalism in the world today. In this paper, I argue that this ‘new nationalism’ is largely driven by immigration, which affects ethnic majorities within nation‐states. This in turn alters the ethnic character of the nation, challenging what I term the ethno‐traditions of nationhood. Our inherited concepts of ethnic and civic nationalism were developed in an earlier period when immigration was limited and territorial revisionism animated nationalist movements. Only on the furthest reaches of the extreme right is the worldview one of ethnic nationalism. In our demographically churning yet territorially static western world, we need a new term to describe the cultural nationalism of the anti‐immigration right. I characterise this as ethno‐traditional nationalism, a variety of nationalism which seeks to protect the traditional preponderance of ethnic majorities through slower immigration and assimilation but which does not seek to close the door entirely to migration or exclude minorities from national membership.     

‘Is imperialist nationalism an oxymoron?’*

According to Ernest Gellner's celebrated definition, nationalism is a political principle that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. Based on this definition, Alexander Motyl has declared that ‘nationalism and imperialism are polar types’. Even so, dozens of books and articles have used the concept of ‘imperialist nationalism’ without any qualms. Is this just a matter of terminological confusion, or does it reflect a deeper disagreement on what the phenomenon of nationalism actually is? In the lecture, I discuss the concept of ‘imperialist nationalism’ as used in the standard literature and find that numerous historical actors take pride in being both nationalists and imperialists. I distinguish between overseas colonial empires and contiguous land‐based empires and demonstrate that in both cases, ‘imperialist nationalism’ can be found. In the latter case, nationalism can take the shape of either ‘nation‐building imperialism’, in which nationalists strive for cultural homogenisation throughout the state, or ‘ethnocratic imperialism’, in which the distinction between ‘the imperial nation’ and other national groups is retained. In overseas colonial empires, I find only ethnocratic imperialism. As a case study, I analyse how Russian nationalists have related to the fact that Russia has historically been an Empire.     

Between banality and effervescence?: a study of Japanese youth nationalism

The study of taken‐for‐granted nationalism has been bourgeoning in the last two decades. With Michael Billig's seminal thesis of banal nationalism, it is now more common to see those studies that focus on day‐to‐day unconscious flagging of national symbols in established (as opposed to new) nations. There are also studies that re‐emphasize Durkheimian moments of collective effervescence through ecstatic events (such as the Olympics and the Soccer World Cup) that concretize national identities. By critically engaging with these concepts, this exploratory study delves into the nature of Japanese youth nationalism. What are the sources of their national pride? How proud are they? Or, not? How do the Japanese youth perceive the national symbols such as the national flag and how is it related to the sense of nation?     

The necessity of Britishness: ethno‐cultural roots of Australian nationalism*

ABSTRACT. Until the last third of the twentieth century, Britishness figured prominently in the national identity of Australians. Many scholars of Australian nationalism have assumed an inherent antipathy between British and Australian solidarities; others have appreciated that there was a degree of mutuality between the two; few have explained why. This article offers such an explanation. It focuses on the crucial nation‐building period twenty years on either side of the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901. Drawing on ethno‐symbolist approaches to nationalism, it argues that Britishness provided the necessary ethno‐cultural foundations for Australian nationhood, the only available repertoire of myth and symbol that could fulfil the nationalist aspiration for unity. Yet Britishness in the antipodes was significantly different to that of the British Isles, as were the civic/territorial components of Australian conceptions of nationhood, giving rise to a distinctive British‐Australian composite nationalism.     

Celebrating British multiculturalism,lamenting England/Britain's past

Drawing upon Littler and Naidoo's ‘white past, multicultural present’ alignment, this article examines English newspaper coverage of two ‘British’ events held in 2012 (the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympic Games). In light of recent work on English nationalism, national identity and multiculturalism, this article argues that representations of Britain oscillated between lamentations for an English/British past – marred by decline – and a present that, while being portrayed as both confident and progressive, was beset by latent anxieties. In doing so, ‘past’ reflections of England/Britain were presented as a ‘safe’ and legitimate source of belonging that had subsequently been lost and undermined amidst the diversity of the ‘present’. As a result, feelings of discontent, anxiety and nostalgia were dialectically constructed alongside ‘traditional’ understandings of England/Britain. Indeed, this draws attention to the ways in which particular ‘versions’ of the past are engaged with and the impact that this can have on discussions related to multiculturalism and the multiethnic history of England/Britain.     

Reconstructing the history of nationalist cognition and everyday nationhood from personal accounts

New approaches to nationalism have focused on the role of human agency within nation‐building structures (nationhood from below, everyday nationalism, experiences of nation, personal nationalism, etc.). However, the development of specific methodologies is still scarce. This paper proposes the use of personal accounts (mostly journals and autobiographies, but not only) as sources for qualitative historical research in nations and nationalism. Departing from the concepts of ‘identity’, ‘experience’ and ‘memory’, it is argued that, although very problematic, these sources are a valid path to the study of nations as they are: social phenomena of discursive nature and political frame, whose real agents are individuals. When these agents narrate their lives employing the nation as a meaningful category, they are not producing mere second‐hand reflections of superior and prior realms, but are performing microhistorical acts of nation‐making that are significant for understanding any case of nation‐building. The paper includes an empirical example using British personal accounts from the Age of Revolutions (c.1780–1840).     

Security,ethnicity, nationalism

Using Slavic examples, the article looks at the nationalism/security nexus present today between the birth of ethnicities (early middle ages) and the birth of nationalism (eighteenth century). I discuss how Slavic ethnicity emerged in Greek and Roman security thinking. Others were classified in terms of ethnoi and were then interpellated into this self‐understanding. If ethnicity is an identity for the Other, then nationalism is an identity for the Self. It becomes a security concern not to order the Other polity's identity, as did the Byzantines, but to see to it that groups that may threaten your own nationalism – minorities, imperial subjects – cannot embrace nationalism. The policy of denying nationhood to minorities must be understood amongst other things as security policy. The organic understanding of the nation as young and vital demonstrates a third interstice between security and nationalism. If the young and vital nation is to grow and expand at the expense of the old and tired, then the polity that represents itself as a young and vital nation is by dint of that representation alone a security threat against those that they represent as old and tired. Finally, I discuss how this theme is played out in today's Russia     

Indifference towards national identity: what young adults think about being English and British*

ABSTRACT. National identity should be sharply distinguished from nationalism. People speak by reference to a general and assumed membership of a country, and routine markers of behaviour and style may exhibit this sense of membership. This matter‐of‐fact acceptance of ‘national’ membership does not guarantee enthusiasm for the ‘nation’ and it cannot be taken as a signal of nationalism, banal or otherwise. While theoretical statements and assumptions often suggest that national identity is fundamental to individuals in contemporary societies, empirical investigation of people talking about national identity uncovers some broad strands of indifference and hostility towards national identity in general, and towards British and English identities in particular. This may reflect young adults' wish not to appear ‘nationalist’ just as many would wish not to appear racist. But the level of apathy and antagonism towards national identity among young adults suggests that we ought to reconsider any assumption that national identity is ‘normally’ a powerful and important marker, embraced with enthusiasm.     

Critical Nationalism: A Liberal Prescription?

Abstract. In this article I examine the coherence of ‘liberal nationalism’, namely, the attempt to combine liberal and nationalist ideas. Attempts have been made to marry these ideas because of the belief that nationalism has continuing influence and importance for the achievement of liberal objectives, such as respect for identity, democracy and justice. Two central ideas in liberalism are the idea of self‐respect as a primary good and the idea of critical reflectiveness. A central idea in nationalism is the idea of the importance of the nation as a community. If critically reflective individuals are to possess self‐respect then, I argue, the value of membership of particular national communities needs to be argued for against criticism. By rejecting an appeal to universal principles, however, nationalists are unable to provide a reasoned defence of the importance of particular national communities, and therefore unable to satisfy the liberal commitment to self‐respect resulting from critical reflection on membership of a national community. The particularism of nationalism, indeed, pulls against the universalism of liberalism so that ‘liberal nationalism’ constitutes an incoherent construct.     

Shaping Women: National Identity Through the Use of Language in Franco'S Spain

In my article I show how a very particular identity was created for women during the period of Franco's Spain. I will draw upon a varied range of materials from official discourses, particularly the Sección Femenina (the women's branch of Falange); the Álvarez Enciclopedia and other texts such as songs, poems and the popular press. Following Foucault (1980: 30) I analyse an identity based on oppressive discourses whose power ‘reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning process and everyday life’. The nationalistic stress of this discourse is one that encourages women to create a new image of Spanish femininity that should be ‘different’ from the liberated portrayal of women coming from Europe, mainly through the path of growing tourism. The language of these discourses is somehow baroque, elaborated, energetic and highly dramatic. It tries to seek attention through an unnecessary and badly misorientated dramatism. It is cryptic and manipulative and claims to be poetical, but its main intention is to confine women indoors and to make them look at the world through the curtains or from a closed window. On the other hand it made women feel they were the representation of a unique matriarchal nationalism making them appear as the heroines of an essentialist national metaphor: women mothers of the nation. Inherent in Franco's equation of women = femininity = nation is a contradiction that defines women as ‘indoor heroines’ and bases nationalism in a naturalised representation of gender where women are a gendered representation of this nationalism.     

Imagined homeland: landscape painting in Palestine in the 1920s*

Abstract. This essay examines the proposition that landscape representations both reflect and endorse national ideology. By studying in detail selected landscape paintings by Jewish artists in pre‐State Israel some of the assumptions linking landscape and nationalism will be revisited. In particular, I shall challenge received notions in Israeli art historiography that interpret the numerous landscape paintings of the 1920s as directly expressing the identification with Zionism – the Jewish national movement. Analysis of the subject repertoire reveals that artists usually ignored images of the Zionist settlement in Palestine. They preferred instead to depict oriental countryside or ancient cities in an emblematic idealistic manner supported by stylistic borrowings from contemporary French painting. The country in these paintings is more an idea than a reality. Yet they evoke neither the biblical past nor a Zionist futuristic vision, but rather an oriental Arcadia of an unspecified time.     

‘The land and its people’: reflections on artistic identification in an age of nations and nationalism

From the late eighteenth century onwards, increasing numbers of visual artists came to identify with their nations and with the homeland and its people. This development was strongly influenced by growing national cultural support and regulation of the arts by academies, art schools, museums and art markets in Western Europe. On a subjective level, the Rousseauan movement of a ‘return to Nature’, Herder's espousal of vernacular cultural self‐expression and, above all, the widespread Romantic cult of authenticity, were potent influences on the inner self‐identification of visual artists after 1800, and were manifested in the novel importance accorded to landscape and rural genre painting in Western Europe. Here I consider the role of national sentiment, the ‘return to Nature’ and the cult of authenticity, first in landscape paintings by Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner and John Constable in early nineteenth‐century Britain, and then in the rural genre paintings of Jean‐Francois Millet and Jules Breton in nineteenth‐century France and Josef Israels, Anton Mauve and Vincent Van Gogh in the later nineteenth‐century Netherlands. Their work reveals how nineteenth‐century visual artists became inwardly identified with the ‘land and its people’, and how they in turn contributed, especially through prints and engravings, to the dissemination of national imagery and a cultural nationalism.     

The Dutch social democrats and the South African war, 1899–1902

This article examines the attitude of the Dutch Social Democrats towards the South African War (1899–1902). At the beginning of the war the SDAP (Social Democratic Workers’ Party) had three seats in the Staten‐Generaal (Parliament). By 1902 this had increased to seven. The South African War created a wave of nationalism in the Netherlands. The Boers were of Dutch descent, and the Dutch generally saw the war as their own. As much as it wanted to assist the Transvaal, the Dutch government, however, could not afford to annoy Britain upon whom she depended for commercial protection of her East Indian colonies. In Social Democratic circles there was a mixed reaction to the war, particularly as their enemy, the Dutch bourgeoisie, had taken the side of the Boers. Arguments were raised for and against on the one hand, humanitar‐ianism and the law of nations, and on the other, historic‐materialistic considerations. The organs of the SDAP—De Sociaaldemokraat and later Het Volk—supported the Boer cause. Their internationalism almost compelled the Social Democrats to stand aloof from the chauvinistic Dutch bourgeoisie. They pointed out that the Netherlands, with its policy on Acheh, an independent sultanate on Sumatra, was in actual fact also an imperialistic nation. Anti‐British sentiment among the Social Democrats rose sharply when the Amsterdam diamond cutters also became victims as many lost their jobs in the wake of the war. Chamberlain (the British Colonial Secretary) and Kitchener (British Commander‐in‐Chief) were seen as war criminals. When, towards the end of 1901, the Amsterdam Water Transport Leagues attempted to organise an international boycott of British shipping, the SDAP sympathised with the plan, but did not give its official approval. Nothing came of the attempt. The Dutch Social Democrats reluctantly accepted the peace, feeling that the Boers would in the future be exploited by British capitalism.     

Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians

Abstract. The formation of nation‐states from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East after World War I, under colonial auspices, proceeded with negotiations in some instances and hostilities in others from previously autonomous communities, some of them formally designated as millets. Iraq comprised a diversity of religious and ethnic communities. The Assyrians, Christian mountain tribes, mostly refugees from Turkish Kurdistan under British protection, were one community which actively resisted integration into the new nation‐state and, as a result, were subject to violent attacks by the nascent Iraqi army in 1933. This episode and the way it was perceived and interpreted by the different parties is an interesting illustration of the political psychology of communitarianism in interaction with nationalism, complicated by religious identifications, all in a colonial context. Subsequent histories and commentaries on the episode are also interesting in illuminating ideological readings.     

Nationalism studies between methodological nationalism and orientalism: an alternative approach illustrated with the case of El Greco in Toledo,Spain

Methodological nationalism is still dominant in nationalism studies. When studying the construction of national identities, scholars generally limit their study to the borders of one nation‐state, while only paying attention to members of that particular nation. Implicitly, foreign actors and influences are left out of the picture. I will challenge this methodological nationalism with a case study, which demonstrates that the place of Toledo within the Spanish national imagination, and more particularly that of El Greco, the most important representative of the city's artistic heritage, was largely determined by foreigners. During the nineteenth century, El Greco was rediscovered primarily by foreign scholars and artists. Moreover, it would be the rise of international tourism in the early twentieth century that convinced Toledans to adopt El Greco as the city's main artistic icon. This case, thus, clearly shows that in nationalism studies methodological nationalism can be avoided by also including foreign actors.     

The growth of artistic nationalism in Senegal

ABSTRACT. In the 1960s, Senegal's first national leaders narrowly defined how artists should practise nationalism through their work, particularly in the weaving craft, and enforced this definition through selective state patronage. This ideological and stylistic control echoed state control over economic markets. As subsequent administrations have restructured the economy, leading to a powerful informal business sector, so have independent contemporary weavers redefined artistic nationalism. Using ethnographic and archival interviews, this article examines nationalism in Senegalese weaving, placing the perspectives of contemporary weavers alongside those of two arts administrators who helped to develop state‐sponsored programmes in the 1960s and 1970s. I argue that contemporary weavers find inspiration from Senegalese nationalism of the mid‐twentieth century, yet have modified it to encompass individual expression. Because definitions of artistic nationalism in Senegal have shifted, it remains a significant ideology within the national arts scene.