Summary of the book National Thought in Europe by Joep Leerssen. I would recommend buying the Revision Guide National Thought in Europe, which will include the readings for the seminars and the lectures.
Readings National Thought in Europe – cultural-historical approach to nationalism
Introduction
Nationalism is a political ideology – one of the dominant ones of the last two centuries. The rise of
nationalism is usually analysed as a factor in the development of states, or in the development of
national consciousness and national cohesion as part of a society’s development towards modernity.
The rise of nationalism has been debated by scholars, some taking a modernist view (nationalism
presence since 19th century) which linked nationalism to education, shifts in economy whilst others
take a more pre-19th century ethnic origin of nations and nationalism; debate between nationalism
and modernization and nationalism and ethnicity (social). In the book, nationalism is seen as
emerging out of the 19th century as a specific ideology with a political and cultural agenda .
Definitions in the book:
- Nationalism is a political ideology which is based on the combination of three assumptions:
(1) That the nation is the most natural, organic collective aggregate of humans, and the most
natural and organic subdivision of humanity; and that, as such, the nation’s claim to
loyalty overrides all other allegiances
(2) That the state derives its mandate and sovereignty from its incorporation of a
constituent nation, so that civic loyalty to the state is a natural extension of national
solidarity
(3) That territorially and socio-politically, the most natural and organic division of
humankind into states runs along national (cultural, ethnic, linguistic) lines
Overall: Nationalism stands for the supreme loyalty of the individual with the nation state
- National thought is a way of seeing human society primarily as consisting of discrete,
different nations, each with an obvious right to exist and to command loyalty, each
characterised and set apart unambiguously by its own separate identity and culture
national thought is mobile and moves across the map
- Nation is an extensive aggregate of persons, so closely associated with each other by
common descent (race), language or history, as to form a distinct race or people, usually
organised as a separate political state and occupying a definite territory (concept itself is
vague and contradictory though!)
- An ethnie is a group bonded intersubjectively by a chosen common self-identification,
involving a common sense of culture and historical continuity (‘’ethnie’’ alternative to
‘’nation’’) and thereby distinguishing itself from the world at large (separation from others)
- Ethnicity is the collective acceptance of a shared self-image
A collective sense of identity derives NOT from a group’s pre-existing cohesion, but from the
perception and articulation of external differences: interplay between Otherness and the Self.
Leerssen locates the root of nationalism in a tradition of ethnotypes – commonplaces and
stereotypes of how we identity, view and characterise others as opposed to ourselves.
Groups, such as nations, are variable and changing as they are constituted not only by material
realities but also by cultural patterns and choices of self-identification; unification of states/groups
(Germany), wars between groups, fragmentation.
Nationalism as an ideal of congruence between nation and state can take various forms: as state
centralism, as a national unification ideal, or as a separatist movement.
Nationalism contains within itself two vectors, ‘’vertical’’ (the rights of the nation within the state vis-
à-vis superiors and rules) and ‘’horizontal’’ (the identity and separateness of the nation vis-à-vis
outsiders and neighbours).
, Wilderness, Exoticism, and the State’s Order: Medieval Views
A tendency of modern national thought to hark back to ancient or medieval roots and continuities
(for example in cultural settings) in which people/nations revive memories of the Middle Ages.
Nationalists thus recognize their ideals in medieval precursors. However, there is no evidence that
medieval precursors recognized themselves in their 19 th and 20th century successors.
The history and pre-history of nationalism consists of changes as well as continuities: most
continuities in history are imposed rather than spontaneously generated and similarities in various
centuries do not constitute unchanging identity or persistent continuity.
Nations in Medieval Europe were fellow inhabitants of a shared region, or people sharing a notion of
common descent, whilst today the notion of ‘’nation’’ is larger and more complex. Also, there was a
tendency to ascribe to different regions and populations a certain set of moral virtues and vices BUT
they were vague and could be given to any nation at any time. Nationality and national character
were NOT the basis of a systematic division of mankind in Medieval Europe. Most fundamental to the
Medieval world order was the opposition between civilized culture and wild nature: people who
lived in groups were civilized and people who were alone were beasts, savage. In medieval society,
the centre of civility was the noble court (good manners and behaviour versus the churl, low-class
country dweller: habits and personal hygiene are animal-like and they have the lowest position in the
social and natural order). the noble, civilized court versus the wild, external, alien nature
(forests) with no rules. Men had no rights in the forest, except for the king who had the right to
hunt. Courtly knight and kings demonstrated their power and heroism by having adventures in
the countryside and this attitude still informed in later centuries a specific notion of colonial
expansion: the forest could be exploited.
As early as the 1170s, ambitious noblemen had begun to claim Ireland for the English crown and
this was justified by two tracts: the topography of Ireland AND the Irish Conquest. Ireland was too
savage to govern itself (compared to the wild nature which England had to conquer as England was
civilized, Ireland was not). Wildness and savagery thus signal an inferior, subordinate position in the
order of things, and English hegemony is presented as a civilizing mission. In reality, Ireland had a
rich monastic life and not savage at all. Ireland, as a foreign land, was described in terms of its
strangeness and otherness in comparison with England: description will be savage and imagined. By
imagination, a country is described as exotic, different, and an outpost of the normal world: people
who are animals. These stories, extremely false and imagined, were told and written down. The
conclusion: England will have to restore the natural order of things by ‘’taming’’ Ireland; English
hegemony is a moral imperative: in order to demarcate and separate the areas of wildness and
civility!! Ireland was seen as belonging in its entirety to the English king’s realm. King Henry VIII
claimed the kingship of Ireland in 1541. Anyone who did not obey the king and still remained savage,
was an internal enemy. Culture and language were sharpened and made uniform. All Irishness was
abolished.
Nationalism as separatism
Cultural minorities became separatists and drove away from the central capital of the monarchy;
two types of this trend: those autonomist movements which harked back to ancient and still-
remembered feudal independence AND those which emerged with the discovery of a separate
culture and identity among a local rustic populace. After 1815, the monarchical power was revived
which resulted in disaffected populations on their peripheries and radicals: resistance against a
central authority. Peasant unrest was transmuted into a national emancipation movement. An
example: Ireland. The incorporation of Ireland into an English polite was never successful. The Irish
royalty from early on stood against the English loyalty. But most important, for the transition to Irish
nationalism 1800-1830, were the agrarian revolts fed by folklore and carnivalesque symbols – which
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