The end of empire and the rise of nationalism

The 20^th century began with a clash of empires, old and new. One side of the conflict brought together two failing medieval empires, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman, and a new German Reich that had been proclaimed in 1871 after the French defeat at Sedan. The other side was the union of an ailing medieval Russian empire, an overstretched British empire, sprouting French and Italian colonial expansionists, and a latecomer, the USA that had annexed the Spanish Imperium in 1898. After four years and three months of gruelling combat and millions of dead or maimed on both sides, Turkey, Austria and Germany surrendered. The victors occupied and dismembered. In Central Europe borders were materialised and new countries were instituted. In the Middle East pens and rulers drew the limits of imaginary kingdoms under British and French mandates. And Germany’s African colonies were taken by France, Britain and South-Africa. Meanwhile Russia’s Bolshevik government was at war with opposition armies supported by Britain, France and Japan, with most of the fighting in Ukraine and around Vladivostok. In Germany the Spartacist uprising was savagely repressed. In Italy the Fascists were preparing to march on Rome. On the verge of default, France and Britain abandoned the gold standard and devalued their currencies, thereby ruining rentiers. The USA gained no territory, but it had greatly developed its military industry and its financial might. Japan was flexing its muscles in Korea and China.

War propaganda had promoted nationalism on all sides. Killing and being killed was the true proof of patriotism. And the adversary was demonised to justify his destruction. This chauvinistic frenzy did not abate when the fighting stopped, and the new Central European nations were no less virulent, which was problematic as there were linguistic and ethnic minorities everywhere. Immediately after the war Western Europe was faced with growing numbers of refugees. It had begun with Armenians escaping mass murder in Turkey and Russians fleeing the Bolshevik regime and the civil war. This was followed by those minorities who no longer felt at home in their birthplace because of new nationalistic demands. Mussolini’s fascist state sent many Italians into exile, and Hitler’s Nazi take over had the same effect on Germans. Finally, civil war in Spain led to countless Spaniards escaping into France. A few of these exiles managed to cross the Channel or the Atlantic. The rest got caught up in the war, most were interned in various sorts of camps and many did not survive. They were part of the general butchering.

The alternative to empire is the nation state. Empire is an extension of monarchy and rules over subjects. It comes into being and persists because of superior armed force. A nation is a cultural union of citizens. It needs a general conformity to those particularities that differentiate it from its neighbours. Empires abolish borders, nations cannot exist without them. The passage from one to the other is a difficult upheaval. Conformity is usually obtained by dictatorial rule, where the majority imposes its culture, its language, its laws and sometimes its religious beliefs on the minorities, who either submit, rebel or go into exile. The nation state appeared in Western Europe when absolute monarchs imposed their stamp on all their subjects and fortified their frontiers. But it was never conclusive, and regional demands for autonomy and independence are still going on. Even the oldest nations have failed to integrate their minorities.

WW1 brought about the dismemberment of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. WW2 sparked off independence in European overseas possessions. Scores of new states were recognised, but few if any formed a nation inside the arbitrary borders drawn by colonial powers. The problems of nationality that plagued Europe in the 1920s and 30s are ravaging most of Africa and the Middle East, as well as parts of America and Asia. And the influx of migrants to Europe and North America is bringing back old demons. Two wars had ruined Europe and East Asia, and had nurtured the three military giants, USA, USSR and PRC, whose proxy battles would darken the rest of the century. To the old empires of colonial administration succeeded new empires of military bases. It was a nuclear cold war of dominos and pawns, and the tensions it provoked kept a brutal lid on protest in both camps.

In Orwell’s dystopia the three contending super powers occasionally change their alliances. China had broken relations with Russia in 1960 and had isolated itself. In 1971, bogged down in South-East Asia, Nixon gave the People’s Republic of China a seat at the United Nations, and visited Peking the following (election) year. This rapprochement left the USSR out on the economic and ideological limb that would break in 1991. The end of the Warsaw Pact and the demise of the Soviet Union brought more nation states into the throng, and it gave America the brief illusion of global dominion, the Dream had prevailed. In fact, this sudden momentous event was the end of empires, and it left a still growing number of a hundred and ninety odd nation states in a general free for all around resources and wealth, where each one must distinguish itself from the others and impose these particularities on its citizens. This is an age of migrations, because nations must adapt to a model that does not fit all. It is also an age of conflict, because convincing people they are different means telling them they are better. This gives the impression of déjà vu, with the years leading up to WW2 (1). But, at present, the whole world is affected not just Little Old Europe. People are fleeing war and persecution, drought and destruction, disease and death all over the planet. And they are trying to reach the remaining safe havens.

When empires crumble the pieces must find an identity. A nation is one and indivisible, and its citizens are undistinguishable before the law and in the voting booth. This homogeneity of territory and population is an imaginary construction with a totalitarian penchant. In reality no two square miles are the same and every human is an exception. Togetherness comes from empathy, common interests and shared objectives. It does not come spontaneously from being born on one side of a line on a map. National unity takes time. It depends on the same story being known and accepted by all, and needs a tight control of education and media outlets. It needs a huge effort to control a geographic space and its inhabitants, but the object is power, the power to levy troops and tax incomes. National unity is a despotic idea that has to constantly reaffirm itself. This imaginary union is best accepted when wealth is shared, when equality and freedom are progressing. But when these processes falter and stall, the fanciful union bolsters itself with imminent external dangers. A nation attacked closes ranks and unifies automatically, but the threat of attack, real or fictitious, can also be effective. The world’s nations have been at war for a hundred years, with a few brief periods of troubled peace, 1923-1939, 1945-1949 and 1991-2001. The hot European War spread to Asia and was followed by a nuclear Cold War, which morphed into a hot War on Terror. The first was too intense and destructive. The second was too abstract and apocalyptic. The third may have found a balance by offshoring the destruction and having a constant threat to life and limb at home, pulverising Sana’a, Al-Raqqah, Ramadi and Kunduz, plus a “fifth column” of martyr assassins who feel neither pity nor fear (2). Instead of confronting each other, the world’s nations have found a common target whose military insignificance is compensated by potential affiliates everywhere. This universal consensus is bringing back ideas that have not been expressed so freely for a long time. Xenophobia and increased repression are conducive to a police state, but no one knows what will happen after the regions held by Isis have been reduced to rubble and emptied of their populations, nor how the struggle between Shia and Sunni, stirred up by Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is going to be resolved. However, it should be possible to keep the game going for a few more years, a far enough horizon considering the imminence of financial and climatic breakdowns.

1. Hannah Arendt has analysed this period in The Origins of Totalitarianism, part II, chapter 9

http://www.havenscenter.org/files/Somers_1_arendt.pdf

2. Il n’y a que les martyrs pour être sans pitié ni crainte, et croyez-moi, le jour du triomphe des martyrs, c’est l’incendie universel. Jacques Lacan