Jones G.S., Claeys G. The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought
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John Breuilly
and developing the ‘national’ language as the vehicle for a ‘national’ history.
Palack
´
y began his career writing historical works in German but shifted to
Czech. Finally, these scholars looked to a national audience. Their degree
of success depended on new elite formation. Palack
´
y had a larger audience
by mid-century than was available to Daukantas or Kog
˘
alniceanu.
The switch to the ‘national’ language depended upon the efforts of lan-
guage reform movements. These were sometimes helped by new imperial
rulers encouraging the use of local vernaculars, partly for utilitarian reasons
(e.g. the Habsburg Emperor Joseph who wanted to raise educational stan-
dards), partly to undercut local dominant culture (as with Russia favouring
Lithuanian against Polish).
National historical writing was constrained by historical materials as there
was a stress on ‘scientific’ history based on original sources. This was a neg-
ative rather than positive constraint, fought out in arguments about forged
or authentic documents but not affecting the broad thrust of the histori-
ography, e.g. describing Slavs as peaceful and productive peoples subject to
the depredations of marauding predators like Germans and Magyars.
Baar analyses the typical concerns of these historians. First, there were
claims to origins, often asserted against dominant groups with their accent
on Graeco-Roman and Germanic ancestors.
24
Second, there were accounts
of golden ages (the Hussite period for Czechs, pagan Lithuania, the Dacian
period for the Romanians). Following the golden ages comes the fall,
depicted as the onset of feudalism and dynastic conquest. Feudalism turned
the nation into a subordinate class. Democratisation and peasant emancipa-
tion, central points in the programme of nationalists, signalled a return to
that golden age. Dynastic conquest was sometimes seen as a distinct stage,
with the three dynastic empires of Eastern Europe asserting their rule in
the early modern period, after the age of feudalism. Dynastic conquest was
a theme the historians of dominant groups (Poles, Magyars, Italians) could
take up.
Politically what mattered was whether institutions central to the history
of the nation had connections to current institutions. The more thor-
oughly subordinate a cultural group, the weaker such connection. Conse-
quently, greater emphasis was placed upon religion, language and ethnicity.
24 The German historian, Ranke, insisted on the superiority of these two ‘races’ over all others in
Europe. A similar argument is presented by Bagehot 1876 who adds Jews (rather than Semitic
peoples) as a third race type. This argument would be taken up by Moses Hess and later Zionist
writers, for which see below. The emphasis of many ‘small’ nation historians on other origins –
Celtic, Scythian – was a reaction against this focus on a small number of leading race types.
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On the principle of nationality
However, these should not be distinguished as types of nationalism. They
all served the pur pose of identifying the ‘whole nation’ as bearer of political
rights. Nationalism switched between and combined these claims. ‘Civic’
nationalism takes for granted the existing dominant culture, making it the
invisible medium in which national claims are couched. (Only minorities
are described as ethnic, not majorities (Kaufmann 2004).) ‘Ethnic nation-
alism’ is discourse which uses apparently ‘natural’ markers to make a sub-
ordinate culture visible. Nationalist claims combine markers to include
and exclude, to co-ordinate elites, mobilise support and legitimise political
demands.
25
There is one special case of ‘subordinate’ nationalism which stresses reli-
gion, language and ethnicity rather than high culture and institutions. That is
Jewish nationalism. Moses Hess, in Rome and Jerusalem (1862),
26
was inspired
by the rise and success of nationalism in Europe, especially the recent Italian
victory over the papacy, seen as a fount of anti-Semitism. Hess stresses eth-
nic, even race identity,
27
language (Hebrew), even if this is not in popular
usage, and gives priority to Jewishness as collective identity over Judaism as
religion.
28
He asserts his nation is one amongst many but also unique, with
a distinct world mission. Finally, like other nationalists, Hess confronts the
partial and incoherent reality of the present with an imagined past when
the Jews were a ‘whole’ people occupying their homeland and an imagined
future in that reclaimed homeland. Jews can never be at home in foreign
lands until they are – like other foreigners – respected guests with a country
of their own. Like other nationalists, Hess is haunted by fear of assimilation
to the dominant culture. A likely source of assimilation comes from within
the nation. Hess constructed the notion of the ‘self-hating Jew’, the Jew
who denies Jews are a nation. (Hess had been a close associate of Marx and
25 There is a long debate about polar typologies of nationalism (western/eastern, civic/ethnic, politi-
cal/cultural) based on different discourses which in turn are expressive of different sentiments and
politics. Apart from the critique of such typologies by Zimmer 2003, see Brubacker 2004 and
Hewitson 2006. On using nationalism to co-ordinate, mobilise and legitimise, see Breuilly 1993.
26 There are a number of English translations of Rome and Jerusalem. I quote from Hess 1958.AsAvineri
1985 points out, all these translations are incomplete and unreliable and, for those with German,
Hess 1962 is recommended.
27 ‘All of past history was concerned with the struggle of races and classes. Race struggle is primary;
class str uggle is secondary. When racial antagonism ceases, class struggle also ceases. Equality of all
social classes follows on the heels of equality of all races and finally remains merely a question of
sociology’ (Hess 1958, n.p., last paragraph of preface).
28 ‘Judaism is, above all, a nationality whose history, outlasting millennia, goes hand in hand with that
of humanity. It is a nation which has once been the spiritual instrument of regeneration for society
and today, as the rejuvenation of the historic nations is being accomplished, Judaism celebrates its
own resurrection with its cultural rebirth’ (Hess 1958,p.19).
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John Breuilly
Engels. The ‘self-hater’ is the nationalist equivalent to the class traitor with
false class consciousness.)
Zionism was confronted with a radically ‘incomplete’ group as Jews
had been forced into occupational and geographical niches and out of
their ‘homeland’. The projection of the nationalist claim upon ancient
Israel and the insistence, through the kibbutzim movement on co-operation
and self-sufficiency, were ways of transforming Jewish communities into
a ‘whole’ society, a nation, as it was imagined to have been in biblical
times. This radical incompleteness makes the logic of nationalist ideology
especially clear in Hess. It is a double view: the specific destiny of the Jewish
nation is part of a world process of establishing nations as the essential units
of humanity. He concludes Rome and Jerusalem stressing the fundamental
centrality of history as world process:
As after the final catastrophe of organic life, when the historic races appeared in the
world, the peoples were simultaneously assigned their position and role, so also after the
final catastrophe of social life, when the spirit of historic nations shall achieve maturity,
our people too, together with other historic nations, will simultaneously assume its
place in world history. (Hess 1958,p.89)
The dynamics of Zionism were different from other cases where most
members of the nation on whose behalf nationalists claimed to speak lived
in the national homeland.
29
Hess exemplifies the ‘demonstration effect’ of
nationalist discourse. As nationalist movements register political success, as in
Italy in 1859–60, their discourse is imitated, with appropriate modifications,
by those speaking for other nations.
Hess was the major intellectual of Zionism in the nineteenth century,
Herzl its principal politician. Herzl claimed that if he had known of Hess’
writing, he would not have needed to write The Jewish State. For Herzl
Jewish nationality did not need establishing by argument but was simple
fact, grounded in the r ise of exclusionary anti-Semitism, and he devoted
himself to developing a practical political programme.
29 Many nationalist writers are exiles but the nation they imagine is not an exiled nation. (Some writers
have placed Zionism in a broader category of diaspora nationalisms but that only works for the activist
leadership, e.g. in the overseas Chinese community. It would not, after all, make sense to refer to the
overseas Chinese nation. Ironically the establishment of Israel produced another exiled nation: the
Palestinians.) Nevertheless, one can analyse the relationship between the intellectual leadership of
Zionism (mainly located in Western Europe) and the mass support it eventually mobilised (mainly
drawnfromEasternEurope)inthesametermsasapplytoothercasesofnationalism.SeeVital1999
and 1975, especially ch. 5, ‘Autoemancipation’.
96
On the principle of nationality
Early and mid-nineteenth-century constructions of diverse national lan-
guages, cultures and histories could be seen in terms of Stage A of national
movements as outlined by Hroch. Small groups of intellectuals, clerical and
secular, asserted the existence of nations and demanded recognition and
respect. However, there was little support for such claims, let alone any
political programme or movement (Hroch 1985, 1996). Stage B is when
small political movements form and Stage C is when nationalism becomes
a mass movement.
30
As national discourse shifts from empirical/normative
arguments to forming the core ideology of political movements, so it must
develop a programmatic character. This is the third element needed to
complete the principle of nationality.
6 Nationality as political programme
The revolutions of 1848–9 propelled intellectual principles of nationality
into politics.
31
Even if revolution ‘failed’ to produce national states, it put
the matter on the political agenda, tested some programmes and stimulated
the formulation of more ‘realistic’ prog rammes. Subsequently as successive
nationalist programmes were realised, that encouraged others to formulate
nationalist programmes of their own (Dowe, 2001;Sperber2005).
As with the diffusion of the intellectual principle, the stimulus came
from above, from the self-styled historical nationalities. The capitulation
of princes to popular movements in the German lands in February/March
1848 led to the convening of elections on a widespread manhood fran-
chise to a German National Assembly. It was decided that the elections
must be held in the territory of the German Confederation. This included
the Austrian crownlands of Bohemia and Moravia. Those speaking in the
name of the Czech nation called for an election boycott. Czech speakers
declared themselves loyal subjects of the Habsburg Emperor and the historic
30 I do not fully agree with Hroch’s typology if it is taken to mean that the formulation of an elaborate
nationalist ideology is a precondition for the development of a nationalist movement, whether elite
or popular. Sometimes a movement can begin with little intellectual preparation and then acquire
intellectual spokesmen. It is, however, useful for conceptualising the way nationalist ideas were
elaborated and translated into political ideologies.
31 The French Revolution of 1789 turned the Enlightenment idea that human society could be delib-
erately reformed into a principle of political action. The counter-revolution both intellectually and
politically sought to discredit this idea. Nevertheless, even if in limited ways, electoral contests in
France and Britain in the 1830sand1840s encouraged the formulation of programmes by compet-
ing parties. 1848 generalised the notion of political competition and programmes across much of
Europe.
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John Breuilly
provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, rejecting German nationalist claims.
32
There was a swift polarisation as the conflicting nationalisms mobilised and
compelled people to choose sides (Deak 1979;Havr
´
anek 2004).
The Habsburg government realised it could enlist subordinate nationalism
against the more dangerous threat from dominant nationalism. Croatians and
Romanians acted against Hungarian rebels. Hungarian nationalists refused
to make concessions to ethnic groups they deemed might merit cultural
autonomy but not political rights (Okey 2000,ch.5). Similarly, the German
National Assembly made provision for non-German language speakers but
not political recognition.
33
Where there had been mutual recognition, political crisis undermined
it. Prussian liberals had supported the Polish cause before 1848 and con-
ceded autonomy to the Grand Duchy of Posen, the par t of Poland brought
under Prussian rule with Polish partition. However, they retreated from this
policy which sparked nationality conflicts in Posen, and led to an ethnic
partition line which favoured Germans. The decision was endorsed by the
German National Assembly (Breuilly 1998b; Namier 1948). Similar con-
flicts developed between Germans and Italians in the Habsburg Empire and
between Germans and Danes in Schleswig-Holstein. Revolution stimulated
the emergence of open political debate and organisation and the rapid for-
mulation of programmes by those who had become, if only for a short time,
full-time oppositional politicians.
Thus the ‘springtime of peoples’ turned into the ‘nightmare of nations’
(Langewiesche 1992). One should not exaggerate. National appeal varied
regionally and had little popular resonance. A dominant national historiog-
raphy has neglected social and economic issues.
34
32 This was the occasion of the famous statement by Palack
´
y that if the Habsburg Empire had not
existed it would have had to have been invented. This is a good example of the way intellectuals
were compelled by political crisis to formulate a programme. In this case Palack
´
y had to recognise
that simple assertion of national existence, value and autonomy could lead to the break-up of the
empire which would leave small nations like the Czechs prey to their larger neighbours, in this case
Germans and Russians. Thus began the formulation of a series of federalist programmes designed to
combine autonomy with security in a larger territorial state.
33 See Vick 2002,ch.4, and the imperial constitution of 1849 (translation in Hucko 1987,
especially Article 188: ‘The non-German speaking peoples of Germany are guaranteed their
national development, namely, equal rights for their languages . . . ’ (p. 114)). Note that a ‘Ger-
man’ was defined as a ‘citizen of Germany’, so these non-German speakers were, politically,
Germans.
34 Rosdolsky 1986, in his critique of Engels, points out that popular Slav opposition to Polish nation-
alist leadership or Romanian opposition to Hungarian nationalism was mainly to do with the
land, not the national question. There was no quick political revolutionary way round these social
conflicts.
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On the principle of nationality
The rise of subordinate nationalist movements had significant long-term
repercussions for dominant nationalism. Polish nationalists shifted towards
a Catholic and populist emphasis. This weakened the capacity of Polish
nationalists to appeal on historic grounds for support in areas of non-
Polish popular culture. Politics came to focus on social tasks within different
territories. Counter-revolution marginalised prog rammatic nationalism for
decades. The rising of 1863 was confined to Russian Poland and nationalists
found it difficult to co-ordinate action across the partitioned territories.
Only the breakdown of imperial power in the First World War stimulated
a new programme of Polish independence (Davies 1962).
In Hungary, radicals like Kossuth drew from 1848 the lesson
that one must construct a federalist, multicultural programme which
appealed to non-Magyars. Kossuth, however, was in exile and pop-
ulist nationalism only became significant in Hungary after his death.
Instead, the elite strategy, following Austria’s defeat by Prussia, was to
achieve internal autonomy. Within that space Hungarians pursued the
forcible assimilation of non-Magyars while holding them in subordinate
positions.
Hungary achieved this because of the blows to Habsburg authority, in
1859 and 1866. The consequence was expulsion from Italy and Germany.
The empire appeared to be breaking into its constituent national parts as
envisaged by advocates of historic nationality in 1848, although not in the
form envisaged.
In the Habsburg Empire the principle of nationality justified internal
conflict: between Germans and Czechs, between Magyars and their Slav
and Romanian opponents. In the Ottoman Empire the creation of new
polities – in Greece, then Serbia and Romania – meant that the principle
of nationality served another function: legitimating statehood. The new
state was seen as the core of a larger, future nation state. Its rulers used the
nationality argument to justify a foreign policy which brought it into conflict
with its neighbours. Nationalism in the two empires also interacted, as when
Serbia and Romania made claims to ‘national’ territory in the Habsburg
Empire or Westernised nationalist elites of the Habsburg Empire elaborated
the ideology deployed by the autonomous states.
35
35 There has been a huge upsurge in new research on Balkan nationalism since 1989. My suggestions
in Breuilly 1993,ch.5 about influences between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires are now very
dated. For an introduction to recent work see Todorova 2004. Valuable comparative collections of
essays which go across the East–West division include Baycroft and Hewitson 2006 and Hirschhausen
and Leonhard 2001.
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Separatist movements avoided the difficulties of formulating a programme
by demanding independence and liberty against an oppressive foreigner.
However, the most successful and influential nationalist movements of the
1860s were in Italy and Germany and these were unification movements.
Unification is more complex than separation, requiring more than state col-
lapse and diplomatic and military success. Unification involved co-operation
between an existing state (Piedmont, Prussia) and a movement which
developed the principle of nationality. To effect co-operation a key ele-
ment was a constitution which extended the monarchical principle of the
dominant state to the national territory whilst giving expression to the
principle of nationality. The constitution included provision for an elected
parliament. That entrenched ‘national politics’ as a routine element. This
provided a model for further national movements which appealed to exist-
ing nation states to help them establish similar nation states (Breuilly 1993,
ch. 4).
7 Expanding the discourse of nationality
I have traced the escalation of the principle of nationality, from civilisa-
tional claims in France and Britain, to arguments of historic nationality
for Germans, Italians, Magyars and Poles, followed by subordinate cultural
groups using notions of vernacular culture, popular religion and ethnicity.
The increasingly populist function of political language pushed discourse
in an ethno-cultural direction, even where there existed an earlier tradi-
tion of framing nationality in elite terms. The successes of German and
Italian unification made the principle of nationality attractive and pro-
vided programmatic models for others. Political oppositions appropriated
the principle of nationality to justify claims, even if these were mainly social
or religious. Self-defined national states resorted to nationalist arguments to
justify domestic and foreign policies.
Tradition and nationalism
The escalation of the principle of nationality forced non-nationalist conser-
vatives to join in. The principle of nationality had been allied with liberal
democratic and radical-populist values. Conservatives opposed those values.
The Tsar was father of his people, the Habsburg Emperor above nationality.
Imperial regimes meditated the strategy of unleashing nationalities against
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On the principle of nationality
one another but the threat this posed to the ideal of order deterred them.
The Habsburgs did not decree peasant emancipation in Galicia in 1846
after they repressed Polish gentry nationalism. Nor did they in Lombardy-
Venetia after 1848 (Sked 1979). The British maintained the Anglo-Irish
landowning class well beyond mid-century. The Romanovs did not seek to
destroy the Polish nationalist elite as a landowning class after the rising of
1830–1.
It was easier for initial conservative moves to be made in nationally homo-
geneous territories. Rogue conservatives such as Disraeli and Bismarck saw
there could be popular support for anti-liberal policies of deference at
home and assertion abroad. In more radical but authoritarian form, the
plebiscitary empire of Louis Napoleon undermined liberalism and democ-
racy at home and took up the nationality principle abroad.
Principled conservatives sought to construct a national tradition on
monarchy, faith and hierarchy. Burkean arguments could be rehabilitated
in Britain. French and Spanish monarchists argued that the true spirit of
the country resided in royalism, provincial diversity and a powerful Catholic
Church. By the last third of the nineteenth century conservative figures had
taken up these arguments and others, such as anti-Semitism, and deployed
them against liberal and democratic principles of nationality (for a survey
see Rogger and Weber 1966).
However, the irresistible rise of popular politics pushed imperial regimes
into breaking with dynastic neutrality or defending dominant cultural
groups. The British government under Gladstone embarked on land reform
in Ireland which destroyed Anglo-Irish landed dominance and provided
space for populist Irish nationalism. The tsarist government decreed eman-
cipation of the serfs in 1861, turning this against the Polish gentry in
the wake of the 1863 insurrection. It also took up a Russianisation pol-
icy against non-Russian Slavs. In the Habsburg Empire, growing Czech–
German antagonism forced the government into explicit recognition of
nationality distinctions (Berend 2003,ch.6). Imperial Germany took up
Germanisation policies against Poles (Hagen 1980).
Conservative sectional interests adopted nationalist language. From the
1870s increased availability of Russian and American grain put European
farmers under pressure. The response was a demand for tariff protection.
This was adapted to the principle of nationality with claims about the agri-
cultural basis of the nation, the need to preserve national values rooted
in the rural population, to ensure self-sufficiency, to maintain a reservoir
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John Breuilly
of healthy manpower for the army.
36
Aristocratic landowners in Germany,
Hungary and elsewhere who had previously disdained nationalist argu-
ments formed pressure groups, hired popular journalists and constructed
nationalist arguments. Ominously they incorporated anti-Semitic elements
into their programmes: the Jew figured as parasite, non-producer and town
dweller, holding honest producers in debt, a pariah group within the nation
(Retallack 1988).
This is the ‘nationalisation’ of politics. All political groups adopt and
adapt the principle of nationality. The principle becomes detached from
specific political positions and one must instead consider the particular ways
the principle is articulated. Presenting French or German nationality as the
complex sum of its provincial identities suggests a conservative articulation.
National discourse to justify expensive policies of overseas expansion can
usually be located in elite liberal nationalist circles. Labour leaders argued
that only full democratisation and social reform would realise the true
nation.
37
Race and nationalism
Fenton has distinguished three relationships between race and nation: race
within nation, race as nation and race as civilisation (Fenton 2006). Banton
has distinguished race as lineage, type and sub-species (Banton 1998).
Banton argues that much nineteenth-century race thought was in terms
of ‘type’. This notion of type can in turn be linked to ‘race within nation’.
For example, one finds many references to a division of the French between
Gauls and Franks, the English between Anglo-Saxons and Normans but
this is in turn based on other race ideas. Gobineau, who published a long
study Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–5) (Gobineau 1970),
distinguished between secondary and tertiary races. The white, yellow and
black races were the secondary ones.
38
But they in turn gave rise to further
36 This rural conservative populism is also at the heart of Slavophilism. The intellectual pioneer in
Germany was Wilhelm Riehl (1823–97). See Riehl 1897.
37 The Austro-Marxist politician and theoretician Otto Bauer took the argument one step further.
He argued that national consciousness would become stronger with the democratisation of national
culture. Bauer was responding to the particular problem of the Habsburg Empire which was t he need
to accommodate national difference within the socialist party while at the same time concentrating
political opposition on the imperial state but his arguments could be applied to the increasingly large
labour par ties of the Western European nation states (Bauer 2000).
38 Gobineau reluctantly accepted a ‘unitary’ origin of humankind, partly through reason (the capacity
for the different races to interbreed) and partly through faith (the story of Genesis) although at one
point he did assert that Adam was father of the ‘white race’ (Gobineau 1970,p.99).
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On the principle of nationality
divisions, such as Slav, Celt, Aryan and Latin races. However, nations were
usually mixtures or fusions of racial types.
39
John Stuart Mill saw a mixing
of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic elements as having beneficial results. Michelet
argued that the modern French nation was a successful if mysterious fusion
of Celtic, German, Roman and Greek ancestors (Crossley 1993,p.205;
Varouxakis 2002,p.22). Gobineau, more pessimistically, saw such mixing
as both inevitable but also having a degenerative effect on the higher race
type.
This use of race – even when notions of ‘blood’ are used – is not
biological but cultural; the terms refer to mental and behavioural qual-
ities, not physical differences. Some writers have argued that race ideas
had a class character but this does not seem to have been significant in
any detailed historical or other analysis. Later, when biological reasoning
was applied to class societies, it took the form of eugenics focused on
the ‘weak’ elements within the working class, rather than being projected
directly on to class difference. Nevertheless, there was a language of race
difference within the nation which provided support for insisting that a
racially distinct group within the national territory did not belong to the
nation.
This set limits to the development of such discourse in relation to
nation.
40
First, the argument had a class dimension, being applied principally
to poor immigrants. Irish, Polish and Russian immigrants were depicted
in racial terms, even by Max Weber who rejected biolog ical notions of
race as unscientific (Curtis 1971; Weber 1978, 1994a). But Weber did not
extend the idea to all Polish speakers. In settled multiethnic states nation-
alist conflicts were not posed in race terms. Nationalists did not envision
within Europe policies of expulsion or explicit separation, let alone mass
murder .
41
The ideal was assimilation into the dominant nationality, incom-
patible with biological concepts of race which imply either fusion (‘melting
pot’) or separation. There was a language of broad race distinction (Slavs,
Teutons, Celts) and one of narrow ethnic distinction (Saxons and Normans,
39 As Banton 1998 points out, thinkers thoroughly confused race as lineage and race as type. There was
also slippage between race as normative and race as descriptive. This makes for bad science but is
precisely what is needed for ideology. The major pre-1914 obstacle to such an ideology becoming
practically significant (and therefore a component of European nationalist discourse) was an inability
to operationalise it. ‘Scientific’ racism stemming from eugenics, along with the enormous power of
the Third Reich, would later provide that ability.
40 I focus here on European discourse. In the USA the language of race, related to Afro-American slaves
and Native Americans, was much more central. See, for example, Fenton 2003,ch.2.
41 Though the treatment of Jews in the Pale of Settlement might be regarded as an exception.
103