NATIONALISM

Language alone is not, of course, enough to explain the rise of modern nationalism. Even language is a shorthand for the sense of belonging together, of sharing the same memories, the same historical experience, the same cultural and imaginative heritage. When in the eighteenth century, nationalism began to take form as a modern movement, its forerunners in many parts of Europe were not soldiers and statesmen but scholars and poets who sought to find in ancient legends and half forgotten folksongs the 'soul' of the nation. But it was language that enshrined the memories, the common experience and the historical record.

Nor could the sense of common tongue and culture have become the political battering ram that it is in our own times, if it had not been inextricably bound up with the modern political and economic revolutions of the West-the political drive for democracy and the economic revolution of science and industry.

Three thousand years ago, in one small area of the Mediterranean world, there came a break with the earlier traditions of state building which were all despotic. The dominance of a strong local tribe or conquest by foreign groups had turned the old fragmented tribal societies into centralized dynastic and imperial states in which the inhabitant was subject absolutely to the ruler's will. But in the Greek City State, for the first time, the idea was formulated that a man should govern himself under law, and that he should not be a subject but a free citizen.

After the post-Roman collapse, it re-emerged as a seminal idea in the development of later European history. Even in the Middle Ages, before there were any fully articulated democratic systems, two or three of the essential foundations of democracy had appeared. The rule of law was recognized. The right of the subject to be consulted had called into being the parliaments and 'estates' of the fourteenth century. And the possibility of a plurality of power - through State, through Church, through royal boroughs and free municipalities - mitigated the centralizing tendencies of government. It was in fact for a restoration of these rights after the Tudor interregnum that the first modern political revolution, the English Civil War, was fought.

But if a man had a right to take part in his own government, it followed logically that his government could not be arbitrarily controlled from elsewhere. It was useless to give him representation if it did not affect the true centre of power. The American Revolution symbolized the connexion between the rights of the citizen and the rights of the state. The free citizen had a right to govern himself, ergo the whole community of free citizens had a right to govern itself. This was not yet modern nationalism. The American people did not see themselves as a national group but as a community of free men 'dedicated to a proposition'. But within two decades, the identification had been made.

The French Revolution, proclaiming the Rights of Man, formed the new style of nation. The levee-en-masse which defeated the old dynastic armies of Europe was the first expression of total national unity as the basis of the sovereign state. Men and nations had equally the right to self-determination. Men could not be free if their national community was not.

The same revolution quickly proved that the reverse might not be true. The nation could become completely unfettered in its dealings with other states while enslaving its own citizens. In fact, over-glorification of the nation might lead inevitably to the extinction of individual rights. The citizen could become just a tool of the national will, of the so-called 'general will'. But in the first explosion of revolutionary ardour, the idea of the Rights of Man and of the Rights of the Nation went together. And, formally, that is where they have remained. At the end of the First World War, it was the world's leading democratic statesman, President Woodrow Wilson, who wrote the right of self-determination, the right of national groups to form their own sovereign government, into the Peace Treaties and at no time in human history have so many independent national states been formed as after the Second World War.

From all this it will be clear that the development of nationalism is a recognizable, historical process. It happened in certain countries, it happened in a certain way, and it created a certain mood which became embodied in the national idea. But with the means of communication open to the modern world, an idea developed in one place can quickly become the possession of all mankind. What is certain is that, in the twentieth century, nationalism, the historical product of certain political institutions, geographical facts, and economic developments in Western Europe, has swept round the world to become the greatest lever of change in our day.

We see it at the United Nations where, in the course of eleven short years, the number of sovereign states based upon the principle of nationhood has grown by three score and more. As I have pointed out, it is unprecedented in human history that such a number of separate, autonomous, sovereign institutions should come into being in so short a space of time.

(From Five Ideas that Change the World by Barbara Ward)