The Nation: Invented,Imagined,Reconstructed?

This was, of count, a theme to be found in Marx's writings - the notion of the 'leading' nations (France', England, Germany) of capitalism - and in neo-evolutionary 'modernisation' theory. See, for example, Nell Smelser , Essays in Sociological Explanation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ; PrenticeHall, 1966).

There was no room for an initial, guiding 'blueprint' of the nation, which activises would then sel out to 'realise', not at least in Deutsch's early formulations. As for the later 'nation-building', It signified more the construction of an infrastructure and the institutions of state than of the nation as such. See Karl Deutsch , Nationalism and Social Communications (New York: MIT Press, 1966); and K. Deutsch and William Foltz (eds.), Nation-Building (New York: Atherton, 1963). For a critique, see Walker Connor , 'Nation-building or nation-destroying?', World Politics (Vol. 24, 1972), pp. 319-55; and A.D. Smith , State and Nation in the Third World (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1983), Ch. 1.

One might also cite here the reintroduction of elites into 'modernisation' theory by Stimuel Eisenstadt , Modernisation: Protest and Change ( Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Premice-Hall, 1965). See Daniel Lemer. The Passing of Traditional Society (New York: Pree Press, 1958); and the critique in A.D. Smith , Theories of Nationalism, Second Edition (London: Duckworth, 1983). Ch.5. Por the political scientists' 'modernisation' approaches, see Clifford Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press , 1963); Lucian Pye , Politics, Personality and Nation-Building (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957); David Apter , Ghana in Transition (New York: Athenaeum, 1963): Leonard Binder , The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York: John Wiley. 1964): and Manfred Halgern. The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and Norht Africa (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).

The prominence given by Kedourie to misguided youth in search of unatainable visions and their 'adaptation' (modelling) of the European concept of the nation to very different African and Asian millieux prefigures the current interest in the imaginings and inventions of secular intelligentsias. See Elie Kedourie (ed.), Nationalism (London: Hutschison, 1960); and Kedourle. Nationalism in Asia and Africa (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), introduction.

Of course, this is only one aspect of a much broader canvass, Neither Huhg Seton-Walson. Nations and States (London: Melbuen . 1977) nor Charles Tilly , The Formation of National States in Wessern Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), have any doubt about the primacy of the structural process, the conjunction of discrete causal chains and sequences, which led to the formation of the oldet, European nations.

Of course, there is a prior structural crisis, the growing split between state and society in Europe since the sixteenth century, which encourages the specious reintegrative solution of Ihe 'nation'; but it is the political goals and skills of nationalists that command Breuilly's attention. See John Breuilly , Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press. 1982).

Hubsbawm distinguishes such invented traditions from custom and from convention or routine, as in a bureaucracy or factory routine. See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1-3

Eric Hobsbawm , 'Mass producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914', in E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.). The Invention of Tradition ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 263-307. adds that even socialist groups found it necessary to invent traditions which were nevertheless linked with Older, popular festivals (May Day. instituted in 1890).

These types often overlap. The functions of the first 'flowing from a sense of identification with a "community" and/or the institutions representing, expressing or symbolising it such as a "nation", See Hobsbawm and Ranger , op cit. in note 7, p. 9.

Ibid., pp. 13-14, Hobsbawm cites the cases of Israeli and Palestinian nationalism or nations as necessarily novel, 'whatever the historic continuities of Jews or Middle Eastern Muslims', because of the novelty for that region of the 'very concept of territorial states', Exactly here lies the problem. As Anderson reminds us, the novelly lies in the transformation of ancient Jewish religious aspirations into modern Israeli political ones

Ibid, p. I. Trevor-Roper's essay on the construction of Scottishness, notably the kilt and Highlands concept, provides a vivid illustration of this thesis; other later examples can he found in Eric Hobsbawm. Natins and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1990), Ch. 4.

This is the metaphor in Kenneth Minogue. Nationalism (London: Batsford, 1967 ); it is one of many (e.g., reviving, reawakening, regenerating) which nationalists use to describe their own role.

For attempts to define 'tradition' and 'traditionalism', see J.R. Gusfield , 'Tradition and Modernity: Misplaced Polarities in the Study of Social Change '. American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 72, No. 4. 1967), pp. 351-62; and Shmuel Eisenstadt , Tradition, Change and Modernity (New York: John Wiley & Sons. 1973). For an early set of analyses of fundamentalist movement, see the essays in Donald E. Smith (ed.), Religion and Political Modernisation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1914).

The extent to which 'Pakistan' was the product of elite interests and manipulations or of pre-existing mass ethno-religious sentiments is the subject of a debate between Paul Brass and Francis Robinson. See David Taylor and Malcolm Yapp (eds.), Political Identity in South Asia (London: Curzon Press for the Centre for South Asian Sludies. 1979 ).

One thinks of the vogue for Ossian, or the forged medieval Czech manuscrips, or the debate on the Song of Igor's Host in Russian nationalism. See H. Paskiewicz. The Origin of Russia (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954).

For the details of this process. see P. Morgan , 'From a Death to a View; The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period', in Hobsbawm and Ranger , op. cit, in note 7. pp. 43-100, the very title of which suggests the continuing relevance of ancient Welsh traditions.

Ibid, p. 59. An old tradition was married to modern methods of mass organisation, a common feature of neo-traditionalist movements. See Halpern. op. cit, in note 3.

See D. Cannadine , 'The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the "Invention of Tradition". c. 1820-1977', in Hobsbawm and Ranger , op. cit, in note 7, pp. 101-64. But the modern meanings are quite different in each generation.

See the analysis of 'blocking presentism' in J.D.Y.Peel , 'The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis', in Elisabeth Tonkin. Maryon McDonald and Malcolm Chapman (eds.). History and Ethnicity (London: Routledge, 1989). pp. 198.215 and The contrasting opening essay by Edwin Ardener , 'The Construction of History: "vestiges of creation"', ibid., pp. 22-33.

For the uses of the past by early Indian nationalists, see the essays by Crane and Adenwalla in R.A. Sakai (eds.). Studies on Asia (Lincoln. NB: University of Nebraska Prets. 1961); see also B.T. McCulley , English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism ( Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1966). Such Hindu nationalism opened the way for a religio-national exclusivism which marks the sub-continent to this day.

The phrase 'inventions of the imagination', in the sense of creations, can be read in different ways, but the insistence throughout that language is the central category - print-language-underlines the prior cognitive dimension. We learn languages, but are born into communities of putative descent. Set Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verson. 1983), p. 129. emphasis in original.

Ibid., p.15. He considers the nation a cultural artefact of the late eighteenth century, an 'invention', but not in the sense of 'fabrication' or 'falsity'. but of 'imagination' and 'creation'. It remains unclear why nations are seen as limited and sovereign communities, except that they emerged in an age of growing religious pluralism and of Enlightenment and Revolution.

Ibid. Why only 'imagined', why not also, even primarily for most people, 'fell'? Not only the image of communion, but also a profound emotions/bond, unites and gives the members of the community life and purpose.

Ibid., pp. 20-31. Anderson uses Walter Benjamin's graphic phrase about 'homogenous, empty time' in contrast to the medieval 'messianic time', citing Benjamin's Illuminations (London: Formans, 1973), pp. 263-65.

Ibid., pp. 38-39, 41-49. Though capitalism is given priority, the slow, uneven rise of state languages, predating prial and capitalism, is accorded an independent status; but this is left undeveloped. Surely, the whole panoply of modern state operations and not just its linguistic unification policies form the framework within which capitalism, print and linguistic and religious homogenisation had to operate; the competition of war-making states in Europe formed the matrix of nascent nations. See Andrew Orridge , 'Separatist and Autonomist Nationalisms: the Structure of Regional Loyalties in the Modem Stale', in Colin Williams (ed.), National Separatism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 1982); and Tilly , op. cit, in note 5.

Anderson argues that language, like death, is a general human fatality: there is no likelihood of humanity's linguistic unification. True, but it is at least conceivable (as bilingualism on a global scal(7). Whereas in the other fatality, mortality, capitalism finds a truly tenacious enemy, whose importance was always felt; hence the appeal of the great world religions and the many forms of ancestor worship. See Anderson , op., cit, in note 21, p. 46, emphasis in original.

Ibid.. Chs.4-6. Despite the evidence he adduces in ch.5. Anderson places the onset of Europe's nationalisms (they occurred at different times In various parts of the continent) at the close of the era of successful liberation movement) in the Americas, i.e., around 1820. Hobsbawm, op. cit. in note 11, does the same no doubt because of the growing tide of printed dictionaries, philological treatises, grammars, etc. But this overlooks the pioneering role of Western European historians and artists. See Robert Rosenblum , Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 1967); and Hans Kohn , The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1967).

Anderson, op. cit., Ch.7. But Is it the last wave? Even when he penned his work, Anderson had witnessed the 'ethnic revival' with its spate of autonomy movements in the Weat, to be followed in the last few years by a wave of violent ethnic neo-nationalisms in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Truly. as he says (p.12), 'The reality is quite plain: the 'end of the era of nationalism', so long prophesied, is not remotely let sight'. See A.D. Smith , 'The Supersession of Nationalism?', International Journal of Comparative Sociology (Vol. 31, Nos. 1-2, 1990), pp. 1-31. If seems strange to bracket Switzerland with the truly modem creations of many African and Asian states (though some of these had, in parts of their domains, ethnic forbears); the Swiss state and nation may be nineteenth century creations, but the latter was founded on long-hold traditions, myths, symbols, memories and values, which acted as foci of 'liberty' for French and Italian neighbouring communities from the later eighteenth century. In other words, the 'ethnic core' of modem Switzerland, the Alemannic cantons (with a few additions), had political and military traditions of confederation in defence of local liberties, which gave political expression to their loose sense of ethnic kinship, Without these, a modem Swiss nation is inconceivable. See Jonathen Steinberg. Why Switzerland? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); and Georg Thürer , Free and Swiss (London; Oswald Wolff, 1970).

Such temptations are not always resisted in some of the essays on British/English national identities. See Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism, The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London: Routledge, 1989); and Gerald Newman , The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History. 1740-1830 (London: Weldenfeld & Nicolson, 1987).

For the exhibition catalogues, see Eri Oyongyi and Jobbagyi Zsuzsa (eds.). The Golden Age of Hungary: The Art and Society in Hungary, 1896-1914 (London: Barbican Art Gallery, Carvina, 1989); and The Twilight of the tsars (London : South Bank Centre, Hayward Gallery , 1991). For Herder's cultural populism, see Isaiah Berlin , Vico and Herder (London: Hogarth Press, 1976). We should also underline, once again, the role of historians - Gibbon, Moser, Muller, Rollin, Villaret, Karamzin, Palacky, etc. See Paschalis Kitromilides , "Imagined Communuties" and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans', European History Quarterly (Vol. 19, No. 2, 1989), pp. 142-92,

I have discussed this tension between newly created civic and territorial political identities and resurgent ethnic and genealogically-based identities more fully in A.D. Smith, National Identity (Harmoadsworth: Penguin Books, 1991). Chs.5-6.

Here the account of Tilly, op. cit. in note 5; and Selon-Walson, op. cit., in not 5, Ch. 2, seem to supplement and modify that of Immanuel Wallerstein. The Modern Would System (New York Academic Press, 1974): and A.D., Smith. Theories of Nationalism, Second Edition (London: Duckworth, 1986), Ch. 6.

The two routes of nationalism, those of bureaucratie incorporation and of vernacular mobilisation, are more fully discussed in A.D. Smith. The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), Ch.6, and in A.D. Smith , 'The Origins of Nations'. Ethnic and Racial Studies, (Vol. 12, No. J, 1989), pp. 340-63.

For examples of religious nationalisms see Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner (eds.), The State, Religion and Ethnic Politics: Afghanistan. Iran and Pakistan (Syracuce, NY: Syracuse University Press . 19861 and Pedro Ramet (ed.). Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics (Durbam, NC: Duke University Press , 1989).