History and national destiny: responses
and clarifications
ANTHONY D. SMITH
Department of Government, London School of Economics, Houghton Street,
London WC2A 2AE
I am conscious of the singular honour, not to mention pleasure, of receiving
these stimulating and thoughtful contributions which, in their various ways,
address some of the main problems with which I have been concerned in my
studies of ethnicity and nationalism. Their depth and diversity has in turn set
me rethinking and clarifying some of the problems that I encountered when
I began my studies nearly forty years ago.
Broadly speaking, the 1960s saw the high watermark of the modernist
paradigm of `nation-building'. This model appeared to offer so much in an era
of decolonisation and new states. Such an activist, sociological approach
contrasted with the previously dominant paradigms of primordial and/or
perennial nations, in which human intervention played a very limited role. But,
as the path-breaking studies of Carlton Hayes, Hans Kohn, Elie Kedourie and
Ernest Gellner demonstrated, the latter were so often infused with a misplaced
retrospective nationalism. Modernism appeared to offer a radical, sceptical
assessment, not just of nationalism, the ideology and movement, but of the
nature and role of nations; for it tied these phenomena firmly to the new
sociological and cultural conditions of modernity since the French and
American revolutions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the modernist paradigm was
further developed and refined, particularly in the influential works of Tom
Nairn, John Breuilly, Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson.
But the optimism of the `nation-building' era did not last, and critics like
Walker Connor and Michael Hechter were not slow to point to some of its
obvious weaknesses, even when they broadly accepted modernist historical
periodisation. At the same time, some radically dissenting voices like Edward
Shils, Clifford Geertz and Joshua Fishman were revealing the limitations of
modernism's underlying rationalism and (in many cases) instrumentalism.
These doubts were reinforced by the growing interest in the relatively new field
of `ethnicity' and its relationship to nationalism, notably in the work of John
Armstrong, Pierre van den Berghe, and Donald Horowitz, and more recently
in the sociological studies of Steven Grosby. There has also been a `neo-
perennialist' revival among some historians, for example, in the work of John
Gillingham and the late Adrian Hastings, which traces the roots of at least
some nations to the Middle Ages.
Nations and Nationalism 10 (1/2), 2004, 195­209. r ASEN 2004
My own doubts about modernism crystallised at the end of the 1970s, when I
began writing The Ethnic Revival. While I remain convinced that the ideology of
nationalism was modern and novel, the revival (or was it survival?) of ethnicity
in many parts of the modern world, and its use by nationalists, suggested the
need to explore the pre-modern bases of nationhood in the earlier manifesta-
tions of ethnic community. This entailed a break with what John Peel termed
the `blocking presentism' of so many modernist and constructivist approaches
focused on the agendas and activities of recent political elites, which had
resulted in a certain historical foreshortening; as if to say, that nothing before
the eighteenth century mattered, and therefore no account need to be taken, and
no enquiry made, of conditions before that time. Not only did such a restricted
view preclude the study of relations between present activities and past legacies
and traditions; it also tended to obscure the vital popular dimension, namely,
the relationship between elites and the pre-existing social and cultural traditions
of `the people' in whose name they entered the political fray.1
Increasingly, it appeared that the `people' in question constituted, not only
`the people', i.e. the non-elites, but equally `a people', a culturally and
historically distinct population. Of such cultural collectivities, the most
common was the type known as the ethnie or ethnic community. This led me to
posit, in The Ethnic Origins of Nations, a strong relationship (but not an
invariant one) between ethnies and nations, arguing that the latter are modelled
on, and often develop from, earlier ethnic communities. Given the many
economic and political ruptures between pre-modern and modern collective
cultural identities in the same area, any continuity between ethnie and nation
had to be located in the cultural and symbolic spheres. This in turn led to the
adoption of the term `ethno-symbolism' for an approach that sought to
establish relations between the different kinds of collective cultural identity by
focusing on elements of myth, memory, value, symbol and tradition that
tended to change more slowly, and were more flexible in meaning, than the
processes in other domains.
As I began to work out the implications of this shift in focus as a general
approach and research programme for the study of ethnicity, nations and
nationalism, it became clear that it involved a distinctive set of assumptions
and hypotheses about the origins and development of nations. These can be
summarised as follows:
1. La longue duree. The study of nations and nationalism requires a long-term
approach, one that seeks to trace patterns of development and change over
la longue duree in collective cultural identities. While this clearly challenges
the exclusive emphasis on the modern period characteristic of modernism, it
also differs radically from the perennialist assumption that nations are
immemorial and ubiquitous. Instead, it requires comparative empirical
study of the patterns of nation-formation across periods without any
preconceptions, with special emphasis on the recurrence of identical forms
of community in different periods of history and across continents,
196 Anthony D. Smith
continuity of specific communities across historical periods, and rediscovery
of `authentic' communal cultures by later generations.2
2. Symbolic elements. In such enquiries, symbolic elements such as myths,
memories, values, symbols and traditions play a crucial role, because they
a) differentiate and particularise individual collectivities of the same type,
b) compose patterns of reproduction and transmission of distinctive
cultures, as the bases of ethnic and national identities c) sustain inter-
generational continuity and recurrence in collective cultural identities, and
d) can guide collective change through reinterpretation as a result of their
in-built flexibility. Of these symbolic elements, the most important for
ethnic and national formations and persistence are myths of ethnic origin
and ethnic election, traditions of homeland attachment, myth-memories of
golden ages, and myths of heroic sacrifice. In terms of ethnic survival and
the persistence of national identities, myths of ethnic election, missionary
and covenantal, have played a particularly vital energising role.
3. Ethnie and nation. Of the collective cultural identities whose symbolic
patterns are most closely associated with those of nations, the ethnic
community or ethnie is the most significant, because nations share with
ethnies certain characteristics, notably named self-definitions, origin and
other myths and symbols, as well as a link with particular territories. But in
other respects the community of the nation differs from that of the ethnie,
notably with regard to the occupation of a homeland, and the development
of a distinctive public culture and standardised laws and customs with
shared rights and duties for the members of a historic cultural community.
However, the question of the historical relationship between ethnies and
nations is an empirical one; we cannot, we should not, presume any one-to-
one correspondence between anterior ethnies and subsequent nations, nor
can we simply locate the former in pre-modern epochs, reserving the nation
to the modern epoch.
4. Dominant ethnies. Nations have historically been formed mainly, but not
invariably, around ethnic cores or dominant ethnies, which have provided
the cultural and social basis of the nation, even when the nation has
subsequently expanded to include individual members, or indeed whole
fragments and parts, of other ethnies. The cultures of these dominant ethnies
continue to provide the unifying elements (in terms of land, language, law
and customs) of the modern nation, even after the addition of other ethnic
and cultural elements; and they may be, and indeed often are, invoked in
times of crisis, such as war and mass immigration, to reintegrate and purify
contemporary polyethnic nations whose members experience the alienation
of modernity.
5. Routes of nation-formation. There have been several routes in the creation of
nations, which stem from differences in types of ethnie. Just as we can
distinguish lateral-aristocratic from vertical-demotic and immigrant eth-
nies, so we can chart the development of nations through processes of
a) bureaucratic incorporation of other classes and regions by an upper class
History and national destiny 197
ethnic state, b) vernacular mobilisation by a returning intelligentsia intent
on rediscovering its communal roots, c) pioneering settlement by an ethnic
fragment wedded to a providentialist destiny. In each of these routes, we can
trace the linkages and changes through analyses of the cultural and
symbolic elements, notably in such modes of representation as art and
architecture, literature and music, law and ceremonies, and in the responses
of intellectuals ­ neo-traditionalist, assimilationist and reformist-revivalist ­
to the crisis of legitimation posed by the `scientific state'.
6. Impact of nationalism. These different kinds of representation and imagery
become even more widespread and significant with the advent of
nationalism, the ideology and movement. While elements of nationalism,
as an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity
and identity on behalf of a human population deemed by some of its
members to constitute an actual or potential `nation', can be traced back to
pre-modern religious and classical sources, its quest for authenticity and
belief in popular sovereignty are products of modern Europe, whence they
were spread to other parts of the world. As a movement that seeks a return
to an idealised past in order to regenerate the community and assure its
unique destiny, nationalism can be seen as a species of `political
archaeology' which helps to undermine tradition and ensure modernisation.
As such it is particularly attractive to all kinds of intellectuals and
professionals ­ artists and writers, educators and journalists, scholars and
technicians, lawyers and doctors ­ and conversely, the movement and its
ideal of the nation stands in need of the advocacy and dissemination skills of
these strata.
7. Types of nationalism. Stemming from the different routes to nationhood,
there have been systematic variations in the nationalism of modern nations.
We can broadly distinguish a territorial version, focusing on residence, legal
community, citizenship and civic culture; a more ethnic version, emphasiz-
ing genealogical ties, vernacular culture, nativist history and popular
mobilisation; and a more plural version, a union of different immigrant
ethnies under an overarching public culture of land, language, law and
history. In practice, pure types are rare; in given cases, these types overlap
considerably and often alternate over the course of nation-formation and
subsequently.
8. Supersession of nationalism. Given the ethnic bases of nations, the various
kinds of nationalism, the uneven distribution of ethno-history and the
cultural and political pluralism of the inter-national order, the chances of an
early supersession of nations and nationalisms appear to be slim. On the
other hand, globalising trends of economic interdependence and mass
communications are transforming, even as they reinforce, the various kinds
of national community and nationalisms. The degree to which national
identities have become `hybridised' is debateable, but there is not doubt that
globalising (and localising) trends have compelled the members of well-
established national states to reexamine received national traditions and
198 Anthony D. Smith
identities, especially in the light of large-scale immigration and the
encounter of different cultures within each national state. On the other
hand, the movement to a genuinely cosmopolitan, global cultural identity
remains the preserve of a small elite, as it was before the age of the national
state.
Most of these `ethno-symbolic' assumptions and arguments have been
addressed by the gracious and thought-provoking contributions to this
volume, and they have helped me to clarify, and in some cases amend, my
own positions.
1. La longue duree. It was John Armstrong in his path-breaking Nations before
Nationalism (1982) who introduced the significance of la longue duree for the
study of nationalism, and who embedded it within a larger enquiry into the
pre-modern bases of ethnicity. Here he has generously included my work in
the long-term project of tracing linkages between collective identities,
notably between ethnies and nations, over successive historical periods,
while laying on me the daunting prospect of exploring distant cultures to
enrich such enquiries. Certainly, this is the kind of work in comparative
history and historical sociology over la longue duree that confronts the
student of ethnicity and nationalism, with all its difficulties and pitfalls, not
least the lack of adequate source materials and the thorny problems of
definition.
2. Symbolic elements. Similarly, I owe to John Armstrong the concept of
`myth-symbol complex' to help account for the slowly changing cultural
elements that form the boundaries between communities. In the present
essay he underlines the need for deeper study of the relations between
religious myths and symbols and nationalism ­ something that I and others
have recently sought to explore in more depth. But, not only religious, also
political, social and linguistic myths, memories and traditions require
systematic exploration, if we are to grasp the individuality, as well as the
continuity amid change, of ethnicity and nations.3
In this context, myths of ethnic election have played a vital role in both
ethnic survival and national persistence. This is the subject of Bruce Cauthen's
cogent analysis of my ethno-symbolic approach to the issue, and its application
to the histories of a variety of peoples. His own contribution illuminates the
role that myths of divine election have played throughout the history of the
USA, and particularly in the later twentieth century. Far from receding with
secularisation, as many predicted, such religiously based myths have
experienced a revival, under Presidents Reagan and Bush and following the
tragic events of ll September 2001. He ends with the intriguing question of
whether the present troubled Franco-American relationship may not also stem
from a conflict of `chosen peoples' and their respective missionary myths of
election.
History and national destiny 199
3. Ethnie and nation. The relationship between ethnies and nations is the nub of
the challenge, and the problems, of Walker Connor's trenchant critique of
my position. Of course, any such inquiry involves the problem of
definitions; and here I am taken to task for supplying too wide and supple
a definition of the `nation', one that confuses it with loyalty to the state ­ a
criticism also made by Montserrat Guibernau, when she cogently identifies
the flaws in what she terms my `classic definition' of the concept of the
nation. For Walker Connor, the term `nationalism' (or ethno-nationalism)
should be confined to the largest group of people sharing a conviction of
common ancestry, while the term `patriotism' should be reserved for civic or
state loyalty.
Now, I have always been indebted to Walker Connor for his clear and
strong insistence on the centrality of ethnic identity in the explanation of
nations and nationalism, at a time when very few wished to acknowledge this,
or even mention ethnicity in this context (1994, Ch. 8). Nevertheless, though his
definition has a persuasive logic, it fails, in my opinion, to do full justice to the
historical and sociological complexity of nations. In a short rejoinder, it is
impossible to discuss so large a question. At the most general level, try as we
must to be rigorous, in this field of study conceptual precision can be bought at
too great a sociological cost. What we need are concepts that delimit
boundaries, not ones that seek to capture often elusive `essences'. Now, while
there is a crucial analytic distinction between the concepts of state and nation
(and my later revised definition of the `nation' in Geopolitics (2002) and my
paper for the 2004 ASEN Conference acknowledges this), in practice there is
also a good deal of overlap in many cases; and given the connotations of
`patriotism' with kinship (e.g. `fatherland'), I doubt that we can draw any hard-
and-fast line between it and nationalism. For example, I find it impossible to
distinguish the `patriotism' from the nationalism of the Swiss, but they are
quite different from, say, Rhaetian or Ticinese ethnic sentiment; yet such a
distinction cannot easily be made in Connor's terms. As he asserts, what counts
is sentient history, not actual history: the Swiss as a whole feel they have been a
nation for many generations and possess a common foundation myth, even
though the original `Alemannic' forest cantons were later joined by others from
different ethnic groups ­ as, after all, were the English, the French, the Greeks
or the Italians, only rather earlier.4
What I am arguing is that, while most nations are formed and crystallise on
the basis of a dominant ethnie, they may, and often do, expand and `develop
away' from that original base and to some extent from its ancestry myth.
Myths of descent are vital defining characteristics of ethnies, but much less so of
nations. Other myths, memories, symbols and traditions (many of them
admittedly pertaining to the dominant ethnie) become important, along with
novel processes like residence in and attachment to the homeland, the
dissemination of a distinctive public culture and the elaboration of rights and
duties in standardised laws and customs. Incidentally, with regard to the latter
200 Anthony D. Smith
two processes, it is important to note that neither require a national state for
their creation and dissemination: they can operate quite well in religious
communities like the millets of the Ottoman empire.
The problem of the relationship between ethnie and nation is also taken up
by Thomas Eriksen in his generous appreciation of my work. It appears that, at
a general, theoretical level, we are in broad agreement, though I have come
round to his view that no real distinction can be made between (ancestry) myths
and historical memories ­ and often now I speak of myth-memories, for
example, of the golden age. On the other hand, Eriksen adds two dimensions ­
interpersonal networks and negative stereotyping ­ to my list of elements that
define ethnies. They are undoubtedly vital to all group relations, but I wonder
whether they are specific to ethnic communities, and should they therefore be
included among the necessary dimensions of ethnicity?
Eriksen's article is particularly rewarding in its testing of the nature and
extent of linkages between ethnies and nations. For, though I have always
denied a simple correspondence view of their relations, I have also argued for
the centrality of ethnies and ethnic cultures in the genesis and development of
many, if not most, nations. For Eriksen, metaphoric kinship and metaphoric
place are the `prime movers' in collective identification, but, though ethnicity is
the most important, it is not the only basis for nations. Now, it may be that a
minority of present-day nations, or should we say `nations-in-formation', do
not have ethnic bases ­ Eriksen cites Eritrea and South Africa; but can we
legitimately term these and other ethnically heterogeneous African (and some
Asian) states `nations', even when they display a vibrant nationalism? Can we
not have nationalism without nations, as we can have nations without
nationalism, and is there not much more to the concept of `nation', on which
Eriksen is silent?
4. Dominant ethnies. Ethnicity, this time dominant ethnicity and its relation-
ship to different forms of nationhood, is also the focus of the cogently
argued analysis and appreciation by Eric Kaufmann and Oliver Zimmer.
For Kaufmann, the issue is to take the idea of contemporary dominant
ethnicity further than I have done, and less equivocally, by showing how
such ethnies delimit national boundaries as well as national cultures, even in
`civic' and `plural' nationalisms like (respectively) the French and
American. These points are well taken, though my main concern has been
with the significance of dominant ethnicity for the development and
persistence of nations and nationalism rather than as a topic in its own right
(which it surely is). Oliver Zimmer, while agreeing with my strategy of
detaching the civic-ethnic distinction from its normative moorings, is
critical of a treatment of concepts of organic versus voluntarist nationalism
in terms of ideas rather than as mechanisms or metaphors in the
construction of nationalist arguments. This is a valid point, but there is
also a danger here of sociological reductionism. Ideas, to paraphrase
Durkheim, have a life of their own, and nationalists often operate with
History and national destiny 201
received conceptual traditions. I hope at some point in the future to return
to these issues. (I return to the issues of globalisation and ethnic-civic
conceptions, below).
5. Routes of nation-formation. The articles by Joshua Fishman and Miroslav
Hroch focus on aspects of the `ethnic' route to nationhood. Fishman's
elaborate taxonomy of language corpus planning highlights the tendencies
for linguistic purity and uniqueness sought by many nationalist movements
in their attempts to modernise and upgrade their linguistic heritage. Both
are dimensions of the quest for national `authenticity' which is such a
central feature of modern nationalism. For Hroch, the shift from ethnie to
nation, which he exemplifies by a detailed analysis of the Czech case, can be
explained in terms of his well-known three-phase theory, especially the
move from phase A of intellectual circles to phase B, that of the political
agitation. Of course, nothing in this development was predetermined; its
outcome, acceptance of the (ethno-) linguistic Czech nation, propounded by
Josef Jungmann in l806, was more an example of the influence of
Enlightenment patriotism applied to the need for social and linguistic
equality for the artisans and peasants of Bohemia by the intellectuals than
of Herderian Romanticism (though Herder's arguments were influential
and would become even more so as the century progressed).
John Hutchinson's rich and wide-ranging account of the ideas and strategies
of national revivalism also builds on the idea of a returning intelligentsia
imbued with revolutionary Romanticism to create `ethnic' nations through a
vernacular mobilisation of `the people'. Pointing to the role of revivalists as
moral innovators aiming to `regenerate' their communities, Hutchinson
provides many examples of the ways in which a revolutionary national
Romanticism, through its new conceptions of history, homelands, vernacular
culture and a political community of sacrifice, has offered a viable third way in
place of neo-traditionalism and westernising assimilation for communities
assailed by Western modernity. In fact, heroic sacrifice turns out to be the most
potent of these conceptions, with the Easter Rebellion of 1916 in Dublin a vivid
case in point. Yet, significantly, the new national myths of heroic sacrifice do
not replace older ethno-religious myths; the national myth is an overlay of
tradition, and is presented as a renovation when older myths fail.
6. Impact of nationalism. The ideas of the nationalists themselves have had a
deep and lasting impact on all areas of society and culture. In her article on
national art, Athena Leoussi focuses on their impact on the subjects and
forms of painting over the last two centuries, and more especially on the
nationalisation of each nation's ethno-symbolic repertoire. Her rich and
comprehensive survey reveals how, in each of the traditional genres,
nationalism expanded the existing subject-matter and introduced new
kinds, notably of ethno-history, peasants and ethnoscapes. One could, of
course, go back further, to the Dutch golden age, perhaps even to the
Renaissance; and one could also trace many national artistic motifs back to
202 Anthony D. Smith
their Christian and classical sources. But, as Leoussi demonstrates, just as
the abstract nation stood in need of art and artists to make it accessible and
palpable, so the artists readily responded to the historicist `political
archaeology' of modern nationalism and the aesthetic forms and ethno-
symbolic contents of the national ideal.
7. Types of nationalism. The various kinds of nationalism resulting, I would
argue, from different routes of nation-formation, are often summarised in
the `civic-ethnic' distinction. Though it has considerable analytical use, as in
Oliver Zimmer's work on Switzerland, this distinction is sometimes
overdrawn.5
Most examples of nations and nationalism contain elements
of both in varying proportions; and a given example will often, over time,
oscillate between these two conceptions. The reason is that both relate to a
community, not to a state or territory per se ­ with history and culture as
pivotal links between the versions of community that they emphasize.
(France, often upheld as an example of civic nationalism, presumes a
commonality of culture and history ­ and the history and culture are mainly
those of a dominant ethnie). What, then, of the `plural' nations which for
Walker Connor can only be states? Here, the importance of dominant
ethnicity becomes apparent (and therefore it is as much a case of
nationalism as of `patriotism', in Connor's terms). In the USA and
Australia, at least, there was a dominant settler ethnie (in Canada, two),
whose history, culture, language and law became the basis of a subsequent
nation with its own `vernacular ancestralism'. This remained the case to a
large degree even when the state began to admit great numbers of ethnically
different migrants, which resulted in a union of ethnies under the hegemony
of the British-originating ethnie and its culture (which remains in place even
after the decline of the dominant ethnie itself). To this triple distinction,
Tonnesson and Antlov (1996) added a fourth type, that of a `class' route to
nationhood. But I must confess that the Asian communist nationalisms
which they cite appear remarkably close to the civic nationalism of France
during the Revolution, which also directed its struggle against the social
elite of its own ethnie (while denouncing it as alien `Franks').6
8. Supersession of nationalism. Not surprisingly, my scepticism towards the
modernist (and post-modern) approach to a `post-national' globalisation
has attracted some attention. The points made by Eric Kaufmann in this
regard, notably the massive shift in middle classes values to a liberal non-
ethnic individualism, are well taken, but they should be read in conjunction
with the evidence of ethno-religious revival based on the Puritan traditions
of the dominant ethnie in the USA presented by Bruce Cauthen (see above).
(I should add that, since my earlier foray into this vexed territory, I have
moved back in time to consider problems of ethnic and national
periodisation and of the religious sources of national identity). As far as I
can see, the basic situation in the West has not changed that radically.
Despite the impact of globalisation and its psychological concomitants on
the `hybridising' of national identities, we still see plenty of evidence of the
History and national destiny 203
resilience of dominant ethnicity at the helm of national states which were
supposed to have become obsolete, even in the heart of Europe, notably in
France. One only has to recall periodic ethnic backlashes against
immigration and asylum-seekers, or for that matter, against too close
European integration, in several of the European states. Moreover, the
inter-national system whose ideologues may seek the supersession of
nationalism, has itself become one of the chief bulwarks of nations and
catalysts of nationalisms in a multipolar world ­ in the West, and not just in
Africa and Asia.
Is this largely a `spectacle nationalism', as Mary Kaldor argues? Apart from
the everyday, banal nationalism in the West proposed by Michael Billig (1995),
the huge outlay in military hardware, the endless diplomatic conflicts, the
majority backlash against immigration, often racist in character, the spirited
defence of national culture and institutions, and the continuing controls
exercised by national states in the West over their populations, can hardly be
dismissed as `spectacle nationalism'. Nor, in another, profounder sense, can the
great national remembrance ceremonies, for all their undoubted `spectacle'.
But the main point of Kaldor's vigorous defence of the modernist
cosmopolitan critique of nationalism against its critics (including myself), is
to highlight the constructed, political nature of nationalism and the closed,
violent, homogenising and exclusive character of the `new nationalism' to be
found from Bosnia and Croatia, Nagorno-Karabagh and Chechnya, to India
and Pakistan, Algeria, Iran, Turkey and America (Christian fundamentalism
and Zionism in the Republican Party), not to mention the Lord's Resistance
Army in Uganda, and Bin Laden's ideology of global Islam. But, in the absence
of a clear definition, it becomes impossible to relate all these disparate religious
and political groups to `nationalism', or indeed the latter to the consequences
of the structural needs of the modern state and industrialism. Besides, every
ideology is politically constructed; the point is to account for its wide appeal.
The use of a simple, normative `forward-looking/backward-looking' dichot-
omy centred on cultural diversity and homogeneity, with some small European
nationalisms in Scotland, Catalonia and Transylvania in the cosmopolitan
progressive camp, alongside Europeanism and globalism, while the rest are
consigned to an extremist, closed and dark past, can hardly enlighten us on the
nature and goals of such a wide array of religious and political groups and
movements. Mary Kaldor sees nationalism's return to the past, to a `golden
age', as a case of `blocking pastism'. But this is to misunderstand the aims of
nationalists, which are not to recreate the past in the present, but to use its
example as an inspiration and means for renewing decayed or fragmented
societies, so as to make them viable and confident in the face of the pressures of
modernity. Besides, can we be so sure that a world of purely future-oriented
men and women would lack passion and violence?7
Surely, matters are not that black and white. As Stein Tonnesson argues, the
effects of globalisation, understood as rapidly expanding trade, investments,
204 Anthony D. Smith
financial flows, travel, information and other forms of worldwide commu-
nication, have been ambiguous, especially for the national quality of states. I
would agree with him that the shift in the powers and functions of the state
from the economic and military to the social and cultural spheres, represents a
major transformation, but I cannot see it seriously weakening the national
state; indeed, with every year the state's intrusive powers are more keenly felt
by all sectors of society ­ not least in the universities!
In the foreign policy field, as recent international events demonstrate, and as
Tonnesson rightly underlines, national states are proving to be quite
independent-minded. His discussion of the relative chances of different kinds
of national state to adapt to market-oriented globalisation is lucid and
instructive, including his interesting defence of the `nation-building' model in
many areas of the world. His recipe of `nationalist globalisation' (my term), i.e.
open, flexible adaptation to the emerging global economy, but as a consciously
national collectivity, one with a clear national identity and shared national
ideals, has much to commend it.
Finally, I return to the vexed but crucial issue of the nature and dating of
nations.
This is a subject of intense scholarly discussion. Montserrat Guibernau,
concentrating on the case of nations without states, demonstrates the
confusion between `state' and `nation' in my earlier (`classic') definition of
the nation. This is aptly illustrated by the case of Catalonia, which reveals the
ability of nations to survive without a state over long periods, even if its culture
is repressed and hence no longer `public' (though still shared and intensely
prized). Yet, at the end of her incisive and stimulating contribution, Guibernau
appears to bring the two concepts together again in a somewhat puzzling
manner, when she discusses the `political' dimension of national identity and its
relationship to the concept of the `nation-state' ­ a term I try to avoid using.
(Incidentally, I have provided a revised ethno-symbolic definition of the
concept of `national identity').8
Montserrat Guibernau's main point is close to Connor's; indeed, she
appears to accept his psychological definition of the nation as a sociocultural
community (namely, a collective belief in ancestral relatedness), and correctly
analyses my own move away from my earlier more modernist (`classic')
definition, and the reasons behind it. Yet, it is only fair to point out that the
earlier definition was more `political' in orientation, and more tied to my
political definition of the modern ideology and movement of nationalism than
the later and broader revised version, of which she seems to be somewhat more
approving.
There is a more basic point here. The `nation' is not an essence or fixed state
that is either present or absent, or that one either possesses or lacks, as
Guibernau and Connor appear at times to imply. It is a precipitate of a set of
processes which are variable in extent and intensity, and which may combine to
produce a type of community that approximates, more or less, to the ideal-type
of the nation. Hence, we can trace the appearance and degree of the relevant
History and national destiny 205
processes of nation-formation; the fact that the extent or intensity of one or
other of them is diminished (perhaps as a result of external force majeure, as
with Catalonia under Franco) serves only to distance the community from
approximating to the ideal-type to some (small or large) degree, not to
extinguish it as a nation. For this reason, we can speak of cultural collectivity X
or Y being closer to or more distant from the ideal-type in a given period ­ with
the specific cultural content being relatively open and subject to revision,
though always within the limits of a particular cultural tradition.
In its recent form, the issue of `dating the nation' was initiated by Walker
Connor.9
His argument, which would regard with suspicion any date for the
nation earlier than the late nineteenth century, hinges on his characterisation of
the nation and nationalism as `mass' phenomena. I share his view that the
ideology and movement of nationalism are modern, including their mobilising
appeal to `the masses', as indeed are most present-day nations ­ though I think
some of them emerged earlier than he allows. But this consensus conceals a
hornet's nest of problems. For Walker Connor, the key to the question of
dating the nation is evidence of national consciousness across a broad
spectrum of the putative nation, since for Connor `mass' signifies the whole
population, including the elites, and not just the `masses' or lower classes. But,
how does one elucidate the sentiments and consciousness of the majority of any
population, particularly in pre-modern periods? Connor is acutely aware of the
problems here. He contends that, unless one has other evidence to support
documentary statements which in pre-modern epochs are inevitably elite
records, the peasants being largely isolated, illiterate and mute, one cannot
make any claims about the existence of a given nation. For contemporary
nations, this means that we cannot give credence to assertions of their existence
prior to the late nineteenth century.
But, this is largely an argument from silence. For Connor sweepingly
dismisses the sources used by ancient or medieval historians as simply
`assertions'. But I see no reason to do so. We, at this distance of time, cannot
know whether the elites of that period (who by virtue of living in that earlier
period surely knew more than we) had a clear notion of sentiments lower down
the social scale. So why should we assume that the peasants and artisans did not
possess any such sentiments? (They often did have them in the case of religion)
It would certainly help to have other supporting evidence ­ of mass
mobilisation in war, or large-scale ethnic protests or riots or persecutions, or
of great popular festivals ­ and in some cases this evidence is available. But to
argue that, without such evidence, we cannot say anything at all about the
possibility of nations existing before the late nineteenth century is to leap too
far in the opposite direction.
Walker Connor twice avers that he never said that nations might not exist in
pre-modern times. But, in point of fact, his test for the presence of nations
appears to rule out this possibility. It is, after all, only from the late nineteenth
century that evidence of the (mainly head-counting) kind that he would credit
becomes sufficiently abundant to enable a judgment to be made one way or the
206 Anthony D. Smith
other. This is surely too restrictive a criterion. For how can we, at this distance
in time, know that `y very often the elites' conceptions of the nation did not
even extend to the masses'?
I should add that the same criterion of evidence would have to be applied to
ethnic identity which, Walker Connor tells us, has been a `fixture' throughout
history. For ethnic identity, too, is, presumably, a phenomenon of `mass
consciousness', and one where we are also reliant upon the records left us by
ethnic elites.
All this, to my mind, conflicts with Walker Connor's repeated insistence on
the evolutionary character of the nation (`nation-formation is a process'),
whose stages in a long process cannot be easily dated. Notwithstanding,
Connor goes on to assert that it is only almost at the end of the process, when
the majority of the population are aware that they belong to the nation, that a
nation can be said to exist. (This does not take into account the shifting/
expanding borders of the `nation', and hence the nature and size of the
population, the consciousness of the majority of whose members is being
sought). But, allowing for the teleology of this framework, why only at the end
of the process? Why not at the beginning, or in the middle, of the trajectory of
nation-formation? Because, for Walker Connor, it is only at that point when
the nation mobilises large numbers of people that it becomes a `major force in
history' ­ and this is, after all, what really interests the students of nations and
nationalism. (This, too, is a rather restrictive criterion of significance). But we
could just as well argue that the nation was a major force in history when elites
led the populace to victory (or defeat) in sixteenth century Europe, at the time
of the Armada or the Dutch revolt, or even earlier, with the Swiss peasants at
Sempach, or Wallace's mass army at Stirling Bridge ­ or indeed with the
Israelites under Saul and Jonathan on Mount Gilboa when the `mighty were
fallen in battle'! Whether all the peasants who fought in these armies possessed
national consciousness, we may never know. We can only judge the actions and
the results.
The nation, in Connor's words, implies a single group consciousness that
transcends the appeal of all lesser divisions within the group ­ though not all
the time, as recent history reminds us (the Russian Civil War or Vichy France,
for example). Even in these cases, the nation continued to exist, though its
nationalism was temporarily eclipsed or fragmented. My point is that we
cannot know that such a single group consciousness did not exist in some states
or ethnies in the sixteenth century or even earlier, simply because we don't have
the right kind of evidence of mass activity or consciousness.
Secondly, I cannot agree that nations are only consequential when their
appeal `has extended to all major segments of the people bearing the nation's
appellation'. It may be enough, as Adrian Hastings remarked, for a significant
section of the population outside the ruling class to feel that they belong to the
nation, for us to speak of this population as a `nation', and for it to be an
effective force in history ­ though I would add that other processes of nation-
formation would have to be well-developed. (Hastings 1997: 26) Of course, this
History and national destiny 207
is not the secular `modern Western nation' with its clearcut borders, its status
as a legal-political community, its mass consciousness and its nationalist
legitimation (see Smith 2004). It is, if you like, an elite or a middle-class nation,
with a distinct public culture, a sense of historic homeland, shared myths and
memories, a clear self-definition, and standardised laws and customs (though
not usually political rights). And even if we cannot know, as Walker Connor
himself contends, exactly how many members of a people must internalise a
national identity to make appeals to it an effective force, this earlier kind of
nation is just as effective for mobilising large numbers of people as the `mass
nation' of modernity.
But it would take another book to support these claims.
Notes
1 See Peel (1989: 198­2l5). For the debate about `navel-less' nations between Ernest Gellner and
myself, see Ernest Gellner (1996, 366­70).
2 For a fuller statement of `ethno-symbolism', see Smith (1999, Introduction).
3 See the work of Hastings (1997 and 2003), Van der Veer and Lehmann (1999), and Smith
(2003).
4 For Swiss history and myth, see Im Hof (1991) and Kreis (1991). For my earlier (`classic')
definition of the concept of the nation, see Smith (1991: ch. l); for the revised definition, see Smith
(2002).
5 For which, see Zimmer (2003). For popular usages, see Ignatieff (1993).
6 On these nationalisms, see Tonnesson and Antlov (1996).
7 Similar problems beset Mark Juergensmeyer's (1993) account of `religious nationalisms', on
which see Greenfeld (1996).
8 For my later ethno-symbolic definition of `national identity', as `the continuous reproduction
and reinterpretation of the pattern of values, symbols, memories, myths and traditions that
compose the distinctive heritage of nations, and the identification of individuals with that pattern
and heritage and with its cultural elements', see Smith (2001: 18).
9 See Connor (1990). For recent discussion and applications, see the essays devoted to the issue
in Geopolitics 7(2): 2002. As must be clear, I do not share Connor's emphasis on the `mass' nature of
nations. This is an attribute of the modern Western variant of the nation, but not necessarily of the
`nation' as such. Besides, other processes are more important for the formation of nations; on
which, see Smith (2002) and (2004).
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History and national destiny 209