Walker Connor

Nation-Building or Nation-Destroying?

Scholars associated with theories of “nation-building” have tended either to ignore the question of ethnic diversity or to treat the matter of ethnic identity superficially as merely one of a number of minor impediments to effective state-integration. To the degree that ethnic identity is given recognition, it is apt to be as a somewhat unimportant and ephemeral nuisance that will unquestionably give way to a common identity uniting all inhabitants of the state, regardless of ethnic heritage, as modern communication and transportation networks link the states various parts more closely. Both tendencies are at sharp variance with the facts, and have contributed to the undue optimism that has characterized so much of the literature on “nation-building.”

When is a nation

Abstract Although numerous authorities have addressed the question, ‘What is a nation?’, far less attention has been paid to the question, ‘At what point in its development does a nation come into being?’ Evidence is offered that Europes currently recognized nations emerged only very recently, often centuries later than the dates customarily assigned. In some cases, it is problematic whether nationhood has even yet been achieved. Four problems involved in dating the emergence of a nation are: (1) national consciousness is a mass not an elite phenomenon, and the masses, until quite recently semi‐ or totally illiterate, were quite mute with regard to their sense of group identity(ies); (2) nation‐formation is a process, not an occurrence, and the point in the process at which a sufficient number has internalized the national identity in order to cause nationalism to become an effective force for mobilizing the masses does not lend itself to precise calculation; (3) the process of nation‐formation is not se...

Self-Determination: The New Phase

Can two or more self-differentiating culture-groups coexist within a single political structure? The question may well seem clearly settled by the overwhelming factual evidence of contemporary international politics, for it is indeed a truism that political and ethnic borders seldom coincide. Thus, the very existence of a host of multinational states, including such a time-tested example as the Soviet Union, would appear to document an affirmative answer. On the other hand, a recent spate of political unrest within such geographically diverse and historically unrelated states as, inter aliay Canada, Guyana, India, Uganda, Belgium, the Sudan, Burma, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, Rwanda, the United Kingdom, and Iraq, focuses attention on the common root cause of intrastate yet international conflict and again brings into question the assumptions of the multinational state.

The Nation and its Myth

SURELY THE MOST TEDIOUSLY repetitive chore facing the writer on nationalism is the need to preface each new piece with his or her answer to the question, ‘ ‘ What is a nation?&dquo;. The task can be avoided only at the risk of being thoroughly misunderstood, for nation and its derivative, nationalism, mean different things to different people. Indeed, slipshod and inconsistent terminology remain the bane of the study on nationalism. As noted elsewhere:

From tribe to nation

Despite the extensive effort that generations of chroniclers and analysts have devoted to the history of Europe and its peoples, assigning dates to the acquisition of national consciousness by any of Europe’s roughly fifty national groups remains a most contentious undertaking. Disagreement is very conspicuous in the writings of some of the last generation’s distinguished historians. To the French medieval authority, Marc Bloch, for example, ‘the texts make it plain that so far as France and Germany were concerned this national consciousness was already highly developed about the year 1100’; Bloch felt the same could be said of the English. ’ Others placed the rise of national consciousness among the major peoples of Western Europe at only a slightly later date. The Dutch scholar, Johan Huizinga, perceived national consciousness evolving throughout the Middle Ages, and considered French and English nationalism to be ‘in full flower’ by the 14th century.2 The British historian, George Coulton, agreed; basing his analysis on the foreign alignments of the Italian states, France, England, Scotland, Germany, Hungary, Flanders, and Spain during the late 13OOs, he concluded that ‘by this time, the nationalism towards which Europe had been evolving for three centuries past was accepted not only as a social fact but as a fundamental factor in European politics.‘3 Another British scholar, Sydney Herbert, concurred that ‘the idea of nationality (began to) appear in real force [as] medieval society was dying’; he asserted that the Scottish 13th century ‘fierce resistance to an English overlord, provides one of the first examples of nationalism in action’, and he added that ‘if the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between France and England is as far as possible from being a national war in its origins, yet toward its close genuine nationality appears, splendid and triumphant, with Jeanne d’Arc’.4 In an article dedicated to the early stirring of national consciousness among the English, the American scholar, Barnaby Keeney, concluded:

Ethnicity, race and class in the United States

Orlando Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse, New York: Stein and Day, 1977, 347 pp.,

Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding

15.00. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1978, xxi + 204 pp. £8.85.