Ch. 5. - The British School of Nationalism Studies

The importance of Gellner, Andreson, and Hobsbawm

• they are often viewed as the modernist or British School of Nationalism Studies

• they ask whether nations are ancient natural constructions or modern historical inventions? → Nations are not timeless entities, they are modern man-made products of history-making processes

The British School of Nationalism

• They theorized that nationalism created nations rather than the other way around

• this is the opposite of the belief that nations are ancient

• According to the British School

  • nations are historically recent, emerging largely after the 18th century

  • they developed alongside industrialization, capitalism, mass education

Ernest Gellner - Nations and Nationalism

• “Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist. “

• nations were created to serve

  • industrial society that require uniformity

  • modern economies that need educated workers

• states created standardized cultures because of these reasons

• nationalism emerges to legitimize these processes

• modern industrial society therefore directly created nationalism

• Gellner rejects primordial nations, the idea of eternal ethnic identities and romantic nationalism

Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities

• Anderson defines a nation as follows: “An imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”

• imagined here is not necessarily false or fictional → just means that individual members of one nation will never realistically know all of their fellow citizens personally → they feel connected despite never having met one another

• Anderson famously theorizes that print capitalism (spread of newspapers, books, novels, printing presses) → reated common languages and shared experiences → ritualcs connected to reading the same thing created the illusion/feeling of participating in the same national life

• these also create homogenous, empty time → the nation feels that they moving together in the same historical present

Eric Hobsbawm - Nations and Nationalism since 1780

• 20th century Marxist historian

• he focuses more on how states actively construct national traditions

• many ancient seeming traditions are actually modern inventions (ceremonies, flags, anthems, royal rituals, military parades) → lead to cohesion and legitimacy

• agrees with Gellner in that nationalism creates a nation rather than expressing the existence of an already existing one

• School, armies, bureaucracies and governments actively shape national identities → nation is not discovered but built

• He also emphasizes class relations, economic modernization, political power → nationalism serves political purposes

• Nationalism is not a natural fact, it is a historical process