Europe's model

The nation-state originated in Europe, where it progressed alongside the absolutism of kings and was then idealised by the republics that succeeded them. However, the kingdoms of Europe were the resulting conglomerates of wars and marriages, and their populations were disparate in customs and dictions, and in their laws, privileges and religious practices. The centralisation of power around the monarch during the Renaissance set about unifying language, religion, law and taxes within the realm. As a consequence most of the period was ravaged by civil and foreign wars.

The monarchs of the Enlightenment increased their power to absolute tyranny and were overthrown by the tax-paying middle classes. But monarchs could rule over a diversity of subjects, whereas republics demanded uniformity. (This was probably linked to printing and increasing literacy, and McLuhan has pointed to similarities with the spread of reading and writing in ancient Athens.) Citizens were equals and, as far as possible, interchangeable, dynastic quarrels were transformed into national confrontations and the king’s mercenary battalions were replaced by a people’s army. The nation-kingdom with its patchwork of subjections was melted into the standard alloy of the nation-state. The same primary school indoctrination for all and general conscription destroyed cultural diversity and replaced it by a uniform monoculture. To impose itself, the monoculture claimed to be universal and superior to all other cultures, which was a national necessity but brought conflict with neighbouring nations. To be the best monoculture within the borders, it had to be the best everywhere. This plunged Europe into new wars that became ever more ferocious and destructive, with advancing technology and with the intent of monocultural supremacy.

The nation-states of Europe seem appeased, but the monocultural mind-sets imposed on past generations are still active and their influence seems to be undergoing a revival. This could be the nostalgic last stand of a moribund notion, but it could as well be the beginning of a new surge in monocultural conflicts. After all, nations remain the only recognised geographical delimitations of the Earth’s surface and its inhabitants. The nation-state model was imposed on people everywhere, and the arbitrary colonial frontiers divided sameness and assembled irreconcilable differences. And ever since the end of colonial rule, the new nations have been struggling to construct their own particular monocultures. From the start, nation building was about illuminating differences, generally by violent means. And yet, forgetting even their very recent past – the partition of Yugoslavia two decades ago – Europeans stand aghast as Africa, the Middle East and South Asia are engulfed by religious and secular pandemonium, by the programmed barbarity of constructing a national monoculture. But as austerity bites deeper, Europe is being confronted with its own nationalist demons that had been smouldering under the ash of past total wars. As the birth place and the propagator of the nation-state, Europe has been unable to change this fatal model into something less conflictive. An incapacity that is on the verge of breaking up the Union, as national populism pushes governments towards more quarrelsome confrontations.

The nation-state, separate from its neighbours, unique and superior, and wishing to impose its monoculture everywhere, is a model based on absolutism, perpetual war and the control of wealth. Can this really be an ideal for the 21^st century?