Nationalism

Origins and Historical Development

Nationalists, historians, and political theorists debate whether nations created nationalism or nationalism created nations. Most staunch nationalists contend that preexisting nations, dating back thousands of years, provide a foundation for every human to fit within a world category that has a unique identity. In contrast, modernist theorists argue that local and religious loyalties were the dominant ideological influences until only about 200 years ago when European states endeavored to modernize their societies and establish a basis for armies and taxation. Most theorists agree that nationalism is based on a powerful ideology that is rooted in real, imagined, and invented memories of conflict, a homeland, traditions, mythology, and customs.

Non-Eurocentric accounts of the origins of nationalism are scant in the literature. Most theories of nationalism indicate that the European nation-states marked the beginnings of nationalism. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, nationalist movements advanced throughout European societies. Some of the movements were formed in opposition to monarchies and religious empires, whereas others sought to unify fragmented territories into larger nations. The movements generally opposed autocratic regimes and royal families. Nationalist movements also sought to define [Page 1240]their territory and competed for borders. By the late 19th century, most of Europe was organized into nations. However, the nations spawned from the American Revolution, the South American independence struggles, and the Haitian Revolution predate most European nationalist movements.

Because of modernization and colonialism, by the early 20th century, nationalism was essential to the survival of most of the human populace. Populations with local loyalties were dominated by vast armies representing large nations. Some colonized populations successfully adapted a national identity in order to defeat tyrant nations (e.g., India's nationalist struggle to end British rule). Other populations (e.g., Native Americans and Australian aborigines) who never, or only recently, claimed a national identity were ruled, displaced, and oppressed by organized nations for centuries.

Nationalism also became linked to racial divisions, as many nations began to use race, or ethnic origin, to enlighten their national identity. By the beginning of the 20th century, race became the basis for most nations—an ideology that posed challenges for multiethnic nations. In the United States, President Woodrow Wilson influenced the worldview on nations through his “Fourteen Points,” which challenged the legitimacy of multiethnic empires, such as the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In addition, Wilson's domestic policies fueled Black and White nationalist separatist movements in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan's primary propaganda tool, the film The Birth of the Nation, opens with a quote from Wilson hailing the Klan as “a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern Country.” Black Nationalism, largely influenced by Marcus Garvey, also originated during this period, as a result of the United States's open bigotry and what many African Americans perceived as the betrayal of the Republican Party.

...