III.

Core Ideals

Intellectually, nationalism's credentials are not as straightforward as either its proponents or detractors claim. There is confusion among its adherents over the cultural elements or “signs” of nationhood, such as language, religion, customs, and territory. However there is no lack of themes and concepts, and all of them can be seen to flow from the basic ideals and goals of nationalist movements: national autonomy, unity, and identity.

Though it may translate into political independence and sovereign statehood, national autonomy is a much wider concept. Stemming from the notion of internal rhythms of the self, autonomy denotes the desire for self-determination, which can cover cultural self-expression like a free vernacular press, freedom of worship, retention of collective customs and institutions and the like, as well as a measure of economic freedom, if not autarchy. A number of recent West European ethno-national movements, such as the Catalan, Scots, and Flemish, have preferred these freedoms to outright independence; that is why scholars like Andrew Orridge term them “autonomist” nationalisms.

Closely linked to autonomy is the drive for unification. National unity is both territorial and social. On the one hand, nationalists strive to unite their homeland into a compact, bordered nation, and, from the time of the French Revolution, they have sought to destroy localism and curb regionalism in the interests of the nation “one and indivisible”. In some cases, such as the American Civil War, when the territorial integrity of the nation was at stake, they have been prepared to make huge sacrifices to maintain unity and overcome the nationalism of those prepared to secede. At the same time secessionists who base their claims on a sense of separate history, culture, and territory, aim to create a new compact nation that will serve as a homeland for all co-nationals. According to the same logic, those ethnic kin that are separated from the homeland, and hence “unredeemed” (irredenta), have to be reunited, they and the territories on which they reside, to the motherland (see Irredentism).

On the other hand, nationalists seek social unity—“fraternité” and latterly “sororité”. They aim to integrate the members of the nation, and unite every family in a common purpose and common values. This may produce a homogenizing drive, particularly with organic nationalisms (see below). Generally, however, nationalists require that co-nationals share the same sentiments and goals, and have complementary functions, rather than be similar. In fact, under conditions of modernity, in which the mingling of cultures is widespread, nationalism for the most part seeks the integration of polyethnic nations, notably in new states in Africa and Asia, and in immigrant societies.

There are, of course, limits to the pluralism of modern nations. This is where the third ideal of nationalism, national identity, acts as a vital counterbalance. (Here we should note the distinction between national identity as one of the ideals of every nationalism, discussed here, and “national identity” as a conceptual tool of the analyst.) The idea that every nation must possess a peculiar character or identity, that it must be genuine and unique, and that we must rediscover and cultivate that identity, has been central to nationalism in every continent and period, from the time of Rousseau and Herder to the newly independent national states of the former Soviet Union, and even to the “Eurofederalist” vision of the European Union.

This emphasis on an often elusive national identity helps to account for the many contributions of artists, poets, historians and educators to the articulation of nationalist ideals. It also helps to explain the close involvement of Romantics bent on rediscovering and depicting the “essence” of the nation, and on the use of scholarly disciplines from archaeology and history to anthropology and sociology, to tell us “who we are”, “whence we came” and “whither we are going”.

Underpinning these three central ideals of nationalism is what we may term the “quest for authenticity”. For nationalists, authenticity possesses several meanings: originality, a pristine state, indigeneity, purity, genuineness, uniqueness, or simply “our own” and nobody else's. The sheer variety of meanings poses a problem of ambiguity: is the indigenous necessarily pure, the original ipso facto unique? For nationalists, such complexities are irrelevant: they oppose the authentic and pure to all that is corrupt or cosmopolitan, and thereby determine the “true” inmost being of the nation, and from it they derive the moral imperatives of national education, mobilization, and destiny.

Nationalists support their quest with a number of other ideals. Perhaps the most important is that of national dignity. Authenticity of itself endows a population with moral worth, for the nation is revealed as a true “child of Nature”, in the romantic image of France described by Jules Michelet, and hence inwardly superior to all those mixed states and corrupt empires which nationalisms were bent on overthrowing. Autonomy and liberation may bring a measure of dignity, but true worth comes from within, summed up in the slogan 'Western arts, Eastern morality', used for so many aspirant national states in Asia, whom Western technological prowess had humiliated, but who could always retreat into the strongholds of their inner moral resources. This was especially marked in those cases like China, Japan, and India, which could boast a pedigree and antiquity to match the oldest and noblest of Western states.

Closely linked to the dignity of antiquity is the ideal of continuity. Historians may argue the toss over the degree of continuity or change in a given nation, but for the nationalist the idea of the nation as a slowly evolving community from rudimentary beginnings to its present state represents an ideal that can inspire devotion and action. There are, of course, nationalists who, like the Pharaonic movement in early 20th century Egypt, believe that, beneath the outward ravages of time the nation never really changes; it is always the same. However, for most nationalists, even when they espouse revolution and national liberation, continuity is growth, and hence change is built into national continuity.

This evolutionary view of the nation is reinforced by the nationalist idea of national territory. The very name, the “homeland”, resonates with familiarity, warmth, and stability. Everywhere else, as Michael Billig reminds us, is “abroad”, the place of adventure but also of danger. The homeland, by contrast, is a place of love and devotion—to its hills and valleys, its rivers and fields, its sacred sites and ancestral resting-places. The ancestral homeland has become an ethnoscape where land and people have become fused, where territory has become poetic landscape, where the folk may be extolled, and where we all can explore and celebrate “our roots” in the national soil.

Nevertheless the ideal of the nation is never static, and nationalism is nothing if not a salvation drama. If it seeks a return to roots and to the golden past, it is only to inspire the members to pursue a vision of glory. To this end, the collective future is transmuted into national destiny, and history serves to instruct the members of the nation in the tasks of their unique fate. This ideal of destiny carries with it quasi-religious notions of collective transcendence and immortality, not in another world, but through our posterity on this earth. Just as authenticity has become the new source of the sacred in modern nationalism, so destiny through biological posterity takes the place of the next life, binding the individual closely into the frame of the nation.