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Regional and National Polarities |
| Section: MODERN THOUGHT / ETHNIC NATIONALISM AND EUROPE |
| Author: Michael E. Lind |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 12/1/1989 |
| Size: 3,793 Words, 24,948 Characters |
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Nineteenth-century Europe engendered two ideas that have transformed world politics in the twentieth century: nationalism and socialism. A third of mankind lives in autocracies that claim a nineteenth-century German intellectual, Karl Marx, as their prophet. Today, the model socialist state, the Soviet Union, is threatened by a revival of nationalism within its imperial borders. Outside the communist bloc, the formation of more than a hundred new states from the remnants of all the European empires except the Russian has created conditions in which nationalist ideologies flourish, sometimes in forms quite alien to Westerners.
The importance of nationalism in the so-called Third World makes it easy to forget that nationalism was born in Western and Central Europe. Is it dead there? If so, good riddance, some European scholars have suggested. "Nationalism, it seems to me, is a phenomenon of a certain stage in human history," suggested Hugh Seton-Watson in 1965, expressing a sentiment previously aired by another British historian, G.D.H. Cole, who believed, "The idea of nationality as a basis of independent statehood is obsolete."
Until recently, nationalism seemed obsolete indeed in Western Europe. To be sure, Irish and Basque separatists have continued their violent agitation for ethnic homelands (Scottish nationalism, on the other hand, has been nonviolent in the past two decades and is motivated largely by the prospect of greater benefits from North Sea oil), and British and French concerns for sovereignty have impeded the greater military and political integration of NATO and the European Community. Even so, Western Europe, a U.S. protectorate for two generations now, has been surprisingly untroubled by nationalist movements seeking to redraw political lines. The West Germans, whose "national revolution" helped destroy European world power and bring about the division of Germany itself, have been conscientious in proving that they are now "good Europeans."
What Nationalism Is Not--Patriotism And Exemplarism
Recent events suggest that announcements of the death of nationalism in Western Europe may have been premature. Even a as major new steps toward consolidation of a single European market are scheduled to take effect by 1992, Western Europeans from across the political spectrum have begun to manifest particularist concerns and passions that might be channeled into nationalist politics. Most significantly, the Germans have b...
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...m, which by its self-destruction introduced Soviet power to central Europe earlier this century, should in the next provide the Soviet Union with access to the multinational economy of Western Europe. Whatever happens, it is likely that nationalism, which has agitated Western Europe for two centuries, has not lost its power to mold the political destiny of the continent that gave it birth. vbcrlf
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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