The ebb and flow of nationalism.

Feudal duties were centred on war. Vassals were expected to furnish a fighting force at the demand of their suzerain. At first it consisted of knights and their assistants, travelling light and living off the land. But as society changed so did warfare. Demography, urban revival and roads made possible the long-bow, the cross-bow, the pike, the siege engine and the professional foot-soldier. It was the beginning of the end of battles on horseback, and meant that armies had to be paid. These new warriors were no one’s vassals or slaves. They owned their equipment and demanded remuneration for their expertise. So the princes whose warring ambitions exceeded their private purse were obliged to levy taxes. Taxation for war is probably the original compulsory contribution, and the least popular. To counterbalance the rejection, it became a security tax with law and order (protection?) as services provided. All of this transformed vassalage into centralised kingdoms, absolute hereditary monarchies and administrative supervision of property, income and census. The emerging states of Europe defined themselves from the start by war taxes and the geographical limits of their levies.

The crusades gave Europeans a taste of world dominion and brought them two determining elements, powder and paper. Fire-arms and printed books inaugurated mass production, modified warfare and revolutionised society. They were the starting point of Europe’s future pre-eminence. (In Kurosawa’ films “The 7 Samurai” and “Kagemusha”, guns mark the end of an era. And McLuhan’s “Gutenberg galaxy” describes the effects of writing and printing.) Meanwhile, taxes for “defence” and a uniform legal system required precise borders and a standard language. Cannons and printing presses greatly facilitated the process by creating impassable barriers and transforming neighbours into incomprehensible foreigners and potentially hostile enemies.

Out of the concentration of power and wealth, and the centralised control of contributions and language, came the idea of nation. The rulers of a geographic space and its inhabitants were as one, with a common history and a common destiny, for king and country. Or, to paraphrase Orwell, the story told of days gone past shapes the present and decides what to-morrow will be. The passage to uniformity encountered strong resistance, however, and whole regions went as far as changing their religious beliefs to mark their differences. And printing-presses were everywhere, diffusing different versions of the past. In fact, it was only in the late 19^th century, when education became a matter of state with a standard curriculum and when press-barons began propagating a standard message, that national narratives managed to impose themselves. The result was dismal, as the original causes could have predicted, with xenophobia, cultural and ethnic cleansing, and increasingly devastating international conflicts. But the nation was there, a curiously idealised object whose very existence depends on the opposition between in and out, them and us. Who is and who is not, and who is really? What is the standard model for members of a nation, and how far can they stray from the norm?

The division of the world into nations means that one side of a border is different from the other. Were it not so the divide would be absurd. This geographical jig-saw puzzle separated historic communities (e.g. the Kurds or the Tuareg), and joined historic differences (e.g. Sudan or Sri Lanka), and imposed the centralisation and concentration of sovereignty. As the national territory is uniform, the leader must decide the same for all. The ship of state has only one helmsman who steers a course for all the passengers. In Europe, this navigation produced frequent collisions as successive national leaders claimed their path was the only path. It also encouraged the colonial conquest of poorly armed regions of the planet, whose antiquated weapons demonstrated the error of their ways. Nationalism’s apotheosis came with the Second World War and, over the sacrificial ashes, the victors split humanity in two.

The Cold War was ideological with an either/or choice. With America and capitalism or with Russia and socialism were the alternatives, with non-alignment providing a façade of neutrality. In this confrontation, two narratives largely dominated all the others and hampered their expression. For fifty years – assuming it started in 1941 – the US and the USSR kept their duo going but America, who was much richer and held the world’s finance, was finally left standing alone. At which point, nations no longer had to choose one of two foreign narratives. They could construct their own stories to oppose the American one, and everyone else's. So, after a brief interlude, nationalism is back with a vengeance propagating its unavoidable deviances. And, with the on-going financial crisis building up the pressure, the stage is set for a free-fight.